Samsura Packaging /The World’s First Recyclable Tube Receives Double APR Certification

With the development of social economy, environmental protection has become the common goal and direction of sustainable development all over the world, and under the impetus of circular economy, the market demand for sustainable plastic packaging has become stronger and stronger, and brands and packaging manufacturers are making continuous efforts towards environmental sustainability.

In recent years, China has been vigorously combating environmental pollution and developing circular economy at the policy level, with the introduction of the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Circular Economy" and the upgrading of the whole chain of efforts to combat plastic pollution, as a composite tube packaging supplier with nearly 30 years of development history and the largest volume in the domestic market, Sanzura Packaging (Jiangsu) Co. Ltd (hereinafter referred to as: Sanzura Packaging) has been actively promoting its packaging products in the reduction and circular economy benefits of technological exploration and innovation.

Recently, Sanzura Packaging's innovative "Ever green 01" recyclable design all-plastic HDPE tube was awarded the APR HDPE recyclable design key guidance protocol and bottle-to-bottle application test (CG+AG) certification.

During the interview, Mr. Li Yanfeng, Deputy General Manager of Sanzura Packaging, said, "We would like to share with you the path that Sanzura has taken with the "coated layer" technology, including some of the lessons learned during the development process, and hope that this packaging will help our customers to have more and better options when considering the circular economy of plastics.

APR

Technology is always iterating fast, and packaging companies have a responsibility to create beautiful products while working with brands to practice a circular economy and preserve the global environment.

We look forward to working with our peers to create a win-win situation and help the industry develop sustainably.

Sanzura Packaging's "Ever green 01" all-plastic recycled HDPE hose solution

1.Replacing the EVOH barrier with a "coated layer"

"Ever green 01" all-plastic HDPE hose

Mr. Li told me that the early APR-approved packaging solutions for composite hoses were all based on EVOH as a barrier material. For example, the first to be certified was Colgate, and later on, packaging companies such as Aesop were certified.

When we applied for APR certification, we had two options to choose from: one was to use EVOH as a barrier material, and the other was to use a coated layer as a barrier. Before making our decision, we had several discussions with a team of experts through the CPRRA association and affirmed that the second option was more valuable, as APR certification itself is an international certification system that recognises the value of recycling plastic products more fully.

In the end we chose the latter option, which meant that we had to test both the material itself and the recycled tube packaging into plastic products, which was much more difficult than using the established schemes on the market.

Using the second option we have to face the core problem of two points: one is the material use range is how much; the second use cycle, that is, how many times can be recycled.

Then for these two problems, we first look at the EVOH as a packaging barrier layer program, hose packaging according to industry requirements for the protection of its contents, must be the barrier layer material thickness to do between 10 ~ 15μm, if not reach this range, the packaging freshness, oxygen barrier and other functions can not meet the standard, and EVOH barrier layer and PE material between the bonding layer, layer by layer together, this thickness will reach 20~25μm; then, if we use Sanzura's coating layer solution, only 1~2μm of coating layer thickness is needed, and all other PE materials are used, which satisfies the first core issue above, and we can achieve the highest proportion of PE materials used.

The second core issue, in terms of the number of cycles, is that by maximising the use of a single material, the recycled content is more homogeneous and the recyclable benefit is greater.

We hope to give the market more options through this differentiated packaging solution and achieve 100% recyclable plastic packaging.

Mr Li said that the "Ever green 01" all-plastic HDPE hose is more thorough in its single-material recyclable packaging design. If chemical recycling is used on a large scale in the future, the purity of the recycled material from this product will be very high after chemical recovery.

Colgate's Dr Wang Jun was the first to pioneer the design of recyclable packaging for tubes, and Colgate's solution has already helped many industry peers to upgrade and improve their products. We hope that the new products from Samsara will provide more options for our peers, so that we can improve our products on this basis and take fewer detours.

2.Ten years to sharpen a sword, focus on technological innovation

No success is achieved overnight. Mr Li revealed that the APR certified hose product was first proposed in 2011 by Mr Xiang Jianqiang, the then Secretary General of the China Oral Care Products Industry Association, and was patented in 2013 after 2 years of research and development.

The reason why this solution is only certified today is that this "coating layer" is mainly based on water-soluble substances as the carrier, the solid content is low, and the energy consumption requirement is relatively high when drying.

However, as our upstream suppliers became involved in the development of the product, we carried out technical research on core issues such as volatile energy and only when the industry was relatively mature and the cost of the product was manageable did we bring the solution to market.

3.Three major market advantages, giving brands and peers a better choice

The design can meet the personalised design needs of brands

Next, Mr. Li said, "Ever green 01" all-plastic HDPE hose has three advantages: Firstly, it is a sustainable plastic packaging product developed from the perspective of the social responsibility of plastic reduction, recycling and environmental protection borne by brand owners; secondly, it solves the problem of "neck" in the hose packaging industry.

The third is that brands have personalised needs for product packaging design, such as mirror, metal or high gloss effects, so in the past recyclable designs, we can only tell customers to make it white or transparent, but in fact, in the APR certification rules, it is not that recyclable can not do surface effect treatment, but first of all, it can not affect the reduction, and then there is recycling and then granulation, which can not detect impurities such as metal.

This is also the second phase of the "coated layer" programme that we are planning to extend, which will provide our customers with more personalised options in the future.

To combat environmental pollution, the whole industry chain needs to work together to find an effective closed-loop path

The problem of plastic pollution is not the plastic itself, but the way humans use and manage it. Disposable plastics should be cut out first, and then the recycled plastic component should be increased. For the development of the domestic plastic recycling industry, the establishment of a complete recycling and reclamation system is a must to explore and practice.

In response to this industry hotspot, Mr Li spoke of our use of a single material to develop packaging, which means going down the route of recyclability and reuse, and recycling means forming a closed loop.

From 2018, we started to use our own production of tube sheets to make packaging. In production, we often produce trimmings, which are all recycled and shredded, re-made into film materials, and then used in packaging products.

From within the production to open up the closed loop of recycling is the first thing our company should do, and the composition of this waste, density and other core technical indicators in the process of regeneration and use can be fully controlled.

Production workshop

From the point of view of the entire product chain, the domestic toothpaste industry can really achieve large-scale production of only a dozen, unlike the food industry involves a lot of varieties, production is scattered, toothpaste industry, although small, but the production is concentrated, when we want to create some new models, the space available for operation will be greater.

Toothpaste packaging

Toothpaste will generally enter the supermarket counters, the sales channel is relatively single, if there are terminal brand owners, industry associations, tube packaging enterprises to work together to explore a set of feasible solutions in the recycling method, toothpaste tube products to open the packaging recycling closed loop is much easier than food packaging, etc..

We have also considered making a recycling demonstration base to centralise the recycling of post-consumer toothpaste tubes. As the main components of different brands of toothpaste are relatively close, if we can graft on the cleaning, crushing and regeneration technology of recycled toothpaste tubes, we can form a closed loop of the whole industry chain, which is a very meaningful thing, so that the single material design that we do is really valuable.

The development of Samsura Packaging: continuous technological innovation in the interest of customers and market demand

Sanzura Packaging was established in 1992 and moved from Shanghai to Taicang, Jiangsu in 2016. Since its establishment, Sanzura has maintained its leading position in the industry in terms of patent application and technology research and development, and in 2020, it was awarded the title of "High-tech Enterprise of Jiangsu Province" and "Suzhou Enterprise Technology Centre The title of "Jiangsu High-tech Enterprise" and "Suzhou Enterprise Technology Centre" were awarded in 2020.

Mr. Li said that the growth of Sanzura has been maintained every 4 years to lead the industry into a packaging iteration cycle.

In 1996, in the daily chemical industry, we started to replace the original rigid packaging with composite packaging, which is the concept of the so-called replacement pack, and at that time, brands such as Golden Spun and Miao Guan Jia became our cooperative customers.

In 2004, we started to introduce the composite tube into the field of pharmaceutical packaging, the first pharmaceutical certificate of composite tube in China was obtained by Sanzura at that time, and the national standard was also completed by Sanzura;

I 2008, we introduced the composite tube into the field of cosmetics, which can reduce the thickness of packaging by about 30% compared with the previous extruded tube.

Samsura packaging products

In the 30 years of development, Sanzura Packaging has been constantly innovating, by trying to change the structure of packaging products and introducing new design ideas to maintain the industry demand and market profit of downstream enterprises, "from the interests of customers, continuous innovation" is the most important part of Sanzura's corporate culture.

In recent years, Sanzura packaging began to develop single material compound flexible packaging, in addition to "coated layer" full plastic HDPE hose, another main product is pure PE/PP compound flexible package, the main attack is 1-2kg heavy packaging high barrier liquid with welding nozzle vertical bag, this combination of technical requirements is relatively high, we will integrate all technical difficulties that we may encountered together when design the packaging bags in a single material for innovative attempts,and the initial technical proof has all been completed.

Technical innovation is to meet the needs of the industry, but also to comply with industry laws and regulations, to meet the requirements of industry standards, for this reason Sanzura packaging set up a special "standardisation centre" to escort technical innovation.

Mr. Li told me that this department has three main responsibilities, the first is to ensure that all our packaging products comply with the requirements of industry laws and regulations, such as food, drugs, cosmetics and other different industry regulations and standards are different, from the point of view of use safety, any material we develop must pass the "Standardisation Centre "Some materials are restricted in their application, for example, they are not allowed to be used in food and pharmaceuticals, so this department will do a good job of strict usage specifications when the raw materials are purchased;

The second is to control the product's process roadmap, which process procedures are used, and changes to the process procedures should be well tracked and controlled;

The third is that we hope that the product structure we want to simplify and standardise as much as possible, to guide customers to purchase standardised products, so that the use of materials can be standardised, such as recycled plastics, in order to ensure that the packaging is easy to recycle and extend the application, we need to standardise the use of materials.

30 years of development into a leading enterprise in the tube packaging industry, relying on the six words

Finally, Mr. Li summed up six words for the author to summarise the development philosophy of Sanzura Packaging.

"Green" Sanzura

In the future, we will still start from the concept of green products, based on the flexible packaging industry.

In the future, we will continue to do more innovation in tube packaging, such as continuing to deepen the coating and vapour plating technology; in the composite flexible packaging, we will start from the demand of the brand application scenario and deepen the new value;

Actively explore new development direction, such as environmental protection industrial packaging, new energy lithium battery film, etc., all are the scope we can go into. With nearly 30 years of experience in the industry, Sanzura Packaging is interested in tackling almost all the difficult points in packaging.

"Technology" Sanzura

The fact that we can take 10 years to bring a technological innovation to market is proof that Sanzura's core competence is to use technological innovation to achieve differentiated products that meet market demand and lead the market.

"Technology" is also reflected in the automation of production equipment, as errors in product testing can occur due to differences in personnel, which can lead to brand trust in the packaged product.

In 2019, we have already implemented a solution for the automatic detection and rejection of all aspects of cosmetic tube packaging, from printing defects, forming defects and dimensional defects.

In October this year, the first automatic inspection and packaging line for toothpaste tubes will also be completed and delivered, which will be another new step in the entire composite tube industry.

"Open" Sanzura

Back to our "coating layer" technology, it is not only a simple combination of materials, but also has many functional extensions, such as water, oil and light barrier, etc.

We are willing to share with the industry the path we have taken in the "coating layer" technology, including the lessons, we would like to share with the industry our experience with the "coating layer" technology and the lessons we have learnt, and hope that this product will have a good market impact in the circular economy.

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Finally, Mr Li shared with us that what is the real market?

From the customer's point of view, they are often more concerned about whether the packaging can bring more added value to their own brands while protecting the contents. This is perhaps the question that packaging companies should really think about.

So the market is open, I have the impression that people started to focus on the single material proposition after the International Plastics and Rubber Fair in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2019, the national goal of carbon peaks and carbon neutrality is becoming clearer and clearer, and the description of the circular economy in the 14th Five-Year Plan is also more intuitive and three-dimensional.

The consensus of the whole industry is to make packaging more valuable and to enter the recycling system. How to form a standardised packaging design, recycling and reuse, and how to establish a standardised and feasible recycling system in collaboration with our associations, brands and recyclers, so that everyone can join in.

In this system, we can then work to bring the design forward a little, make recycling easier, and compete with whoever is running faster.