The contract manufacturer SternMaid has modernized one of its packaging lines by adding flexible filling equipment for spiral-wound cardboard cans. Besides the classic tinplate bottoms, the cans can now be closed with a cardboard base to make them over 95 percent recyclable.  

According to the new EU packaging directive of 2019, more raw materials from packaging must be recovered and re-used. The prescribed recycling quota for paper, for example, is now 80 percent and will be raised to 90 percent as of 2022.[1]

“In order to keep pace with this development, we have chosen to invest in cardboard can bottoms as an optional alternative closure”, Mark Riemer, Commercial Director of SternMaid, explains. “That greatly improves their recyclability. The traditional seal, a permanently seamed-on tinplate bottom, posed a major problem in the reprocessing of recyclable materials.”

Since the can body with a cardboard bottom consists of over 95 percent paper and the interior and exterior lamination is very thin, it may be disposed of along with waste paper. A further advantage is its lower weight: an empty can with a cardboard bottom, a diameter of 99 mm and a height of 180 mm, for example, is about 13.6 percent lighter than the same can with a tinplate base.

From dry beverage bases, dietetic drinks and food supplements to products for athletes and foods for special medicinal purposes, SternMaid can fill a wide range of powdered products on the new line.

[1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/mehr-recycling-in-deutschland-1507858