BASF and Metpack team up to develop home-compostable paper for food packaging

Metpack has launched Ezycompost coated paper and paperboard, which is reportedly home-compostable and coated with BASF's ecovio 70 PS14H6 biopolymer, which is said to have excellent barrier properties against liquids, fats, greases and mineral oils, and is heat stable in boiling water up to 100°C.

BASF's ecovio coating has apparently received food contact approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ezycompost is designed to provide paper packaging manufacturers and food brands with certainty that food packaging made from virgin paper is safe for consumers to use and will not produce persistent microplastics after home composting.

Metpack says the paper can be used in food contact applications such as hot and cold cups, deep-freeze or microwave pots and trays. The paper can reportedly be manufactured using standard molding lines and can be coated faster and with 40% thinner coating thickness than polylactic acid (PLA).

According to BASF, its ecovio material (PBAT) is non-adhesive on cold rolled coils and can be processed by monolayer or coextrusion without adhesives. Typical applications for ecovio include organic waste bags, cling film and fruit and vegetable bags, as well as agricultural mulch and food packaging applications.

After use, Ezycompost food packaging coated with ecovio can be composted in garden home compost in accordance with national regulations.

In April, Finnish startup Fiberdom reported that it had received €3.5 million in financing to develop and expand its patented technology, which creates a '100% plastic-free' material designed to replace non-essential plastics with scalable circular solutions. The product is designed to address the challenges of existing fiber-based solutions, such as limited formability and strength in demanding applications, which often require additives and may compromise recyclability.

In the same month, packaging film supplier SÜDPACK, food service company Werz and BASF Gastronomie collaborated to use BASF's polyamide Ultramid Ccycled material for meat and sausage packaging in the hotel, restaurant and catering industries. The high-barrier packaging film is reportedly manufactured according to current German minimum standards and is assessed as recyclable in the polyethylene film stream.