The Role of Plastics in Packaging, Features - Personality

Keith A Pearson
President,
World Packaging Organisation

The plastic industry has always been a dynamic industry combining practical know-how with science and art, in order to be in a position to meet customer demands and make inroads into areas that were the sole domain of the other packaging mediums such as paper, and board, metal and glass.

In keeping with the nature of the industry, there are ongoing efforts to meet the ‘new world’ requirements related to sustainable development, by being ready to accept responsibilities in regard to the triple bottom line, caring about the social implications, caring about the environment and being commercially responsible.

In order to understand how plastics is working, it may be an idea to review a particular country’s market and so I have selected South Africa as a region to focus on.

South Africa has a population of around 49 million people with a large range of income groups and vastly varying living conditions. There are eleven official languages with English used in business.

Fifty two per cent of all locally produced plastics end up in packaging applications. This is much larger than the rest of the world which varies between 25-30%. The volume used in packaging amounts to 730,000 tonnes per annum which equates to 14.8kg/capita. Compared to the total packaging market in South Africa, plastics accounts for 19.3% of the total packaging tonnage and 43.1% by value.

Flexible packaging films are mainly single layer PE-LD and PE-LLD. During the last couple of years, PP and BOPP films are increasing their market share. Barrier films are produced by a small number of larger producers and are used mainly in processed meat applications. Nylon and EVOH have proved to be the more popular barrier materials.

Surlyn heat sealing layers are a small portion of the multi-layer films. Larger converters are able to offer decorating in flexographic or gravure using ten colour presses.Laminating films are also slowly increasing in volumes with a few newcomers emerging over the last few years. The more popular laminates are manufactured from PET (imported) and BOPP.

The need for convenient packs for meals-on-the-go and single portion packs has led to a number of developments in the flexible film industry. Very few of these developments are unique and are follow-ups from what is currently available in Europe and the East. Like most countries, there is an ever increasing need for packaging to deal with hygiene and tamper evident factors. Another area of growth is to be seen in the hot filled retort pouches, but growth in this area is very sedentary.

Rigid packaging has seen developments around extended shelf-life products like meat trays including barrier sealing films, controlled atmosphere packaging PET punnets, multi-layer bottles for automotive oil and domestic cleaning agents. In the industrial packaging sector, there have been moves to down-gauge and size adjustments for more efficient container fitment and reduction of transport costs, which fits very nicely into sustainability initiatives.

Active packaging is growing slowly, in fact much slower than the rest of the world; examples would be sulphur dioxide release films used on the packaging of grapes and oxygen scavengers in PET punnets.

Biomass products are available in the market but in very small quantities, these are mainly PLA products like take-away sandwich containers, punnets and take-away food containers. Currently, there are no commercial composting facilities in South Africa and these products are placed in landfills.

The plastic bag saga has been ongoing in South Africa for a number of years and currently the tolerated thickness is 30 microns plus or minus 20% with only 50% ink coverage. The plastic bag industry has been decimated with the ban of the old style bags and the resultant 50% reduction of bag quantities.

Sustainable initiatives have generated serious discussions and planning between brand owners and the packaging industry and the first two R’s, reduction and recycling of packaging are the main areas of activity.

There are a number of challenges facing the plastic converters such as increases in electricity charges, low productivity of labour force, Government implementation of Waste Bill and impending recycling levy.

The plastic industry has a history of resilience and there is no doubt that they will deal with these and other challenges in a professional manner.

Data and information sourced from:
• Plastix 911
• Business Marketing Intelligence

The Role of Plastics in Packaging

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