London, UK – April 2022 – Klöckner Pentaplast (kp), a global leader in recycled content products and high-barrier protective packaging, celebrates the second year of its award winning kp Tray2Tray^® initiative, which works towards creating a closed loop for food packaging. With several regions of their global business now using kp Tray2Tray^® flake in their trays and rigid films, they call upon the industry to help drive the initiative further, creating separate recycling and sorting systems specifically for pots, tubs and trays to turn them back into more of the same. 

kp has been manufacturing fresh food packaging made with post-consumer recycled PET (rPET) for almost two decades, making them one of the largest consumers of this valuable raw material. National regulations, such as plastic taxes coming into effect in some countries means there is an ever increasing demand for recycled PET. Alongside a post-Covid world that has seen unprecedented price increases of raw materials, energy, transportation and labour costs, it is vital for food packaging manufacturers to secure material to help keep food supply chains affordable. As all packaging producers in food and drink demand recycled material, it is now essential to separate food packaging from bottle flake to meet demand. 

With sites around the globe, kp is working to implement kp Tray2Tray^® in its operations at every site. Its pilot site in Pravia, Spain is already using up to 30% kp Tray2Tray^® flake in a range of its thermoformed products for protein – with qualified certification from RecyClass. Another five sites in the UK, Portugal, Spain and Germany are producing rigid films for form, fill and seal applications using kp Tray2Tray^® as part of their extrusion processes, with sister site INFIA also incorporating it into their processes and producing fruit punnets. 

Adam Barnett, President Food Packaging says: “For several years, we’ve been driving multiple work streams globally, collaborating with the entire value chain, including recyclers, expert partners, governments and other stakeholders, to establish new ways to collect and process separate streams of rPET tray flake. Our ultimate aim is to help build the new infrastructures and incentives to collect, sort and recycle, ensuring wherever we operate we will enable full tray to tray circularity. Now we call upon our customers, the retailers and extend this to the industry, pledging to help us create further demand for tray to tray material inclusion in their products.” 

In 2021, kp launched “Investing in Better”, a broad and ambitious sustainability strategy with ten time-bound and measurable long-term targets. The strategy is built around three main objectives: Close the Loop, Work Smarter and Act Responsibly. Under the Close the Loop objective one of the targets is that by the end of 2025, at least 30% of the post-consumer recycled material in their packaging will be from kp Tray2Tray^® material. kp can report that in their second year since the launch of the initiative, 10% of its post-consumer recycled content comes from trays.

kp Tray2Tray^® gained two new prestigious awards in 2021 – Sustainable Supplier of the Year at the Footprint Awards, and Best Food Packaging in the Liderpack Awards, creating awareness of the initiative.

Notes to Editors:

kp, a manufacturer of sustainable plastic food packaging launched their kp Tray2Tray® initiative in May 2020. The initiative works towards creating a separate supply stream of recycled PET pots, tubs and trays that can be used to make more of the same, creating a unique food packaging closed loop process. 

Normally pots, tubs and trays are either not recycled or are recycled together with PET bottles. With an increased demand for recycled content in food and drink packaging due to new legislation across the globe it’s important to capture all recyclable PET which is a valuable raw material.

 Using post-consumer recycled PET in their products is nothing new to kp. In fact they’ve been making food packaging with rPET for over a decade across their global sites. The rest of the industry is now catching on and building this into their sustainability targets, and demand for this material is proving much more difficult and increasingly more expensive, which has an impact on the entire food supply chain and can ultimately increase the cost of food on the shelves. 

With this expectation in foresight kp began speaking to their network, the industry and their supply chain and are collaboratively working with many partners to create demand for better recycling of pots, tubs and trays, which currently are not as easily recycled as bottles, and to separate these materials which are then flaked and can then be included in new food packaging, closing the loop.