After an initial testing period of three months on its Eila milk brand, Finnish dairy product market leader Valio has announced its approval of the fully-renewable Tetra Rex Bio-based carton for its Valio Luomu organic milk and sour milk milk packaging, available on shelves as of 1 May.
Valio says it aims to increase the proportion of renewable raw material used in all of its packaging, ultimately looking to use cartons produced from 100% renewable raw materials across its full product range. At the same time, the company has also decided to use Tetra Pak’s 100% bio based closures for all its gable-top packages.
"We received extremely positive feedback from consumers during the test phase, so it was natural to move towards a more permanent use of fully renewable milk cartons. We have chosen to use the 100% renewable packages for our organic milk in the first instance because buyers of organic products in particular appreciate ecological packages,” Tanja Virtanen-Leppä, packaging technology manager from Valio explains.
The deployment of fully renewable packages on a large scale, however, requires gradual roll-out due to the limited availability of the bio-based plastics required for the manufacturing process.
Tetra Rex Bio-based is manufactured solely from plant-based materials. All materials used in the package are traceable to their origins, like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paperboard and the 100% bio-based plastic derived from sugar cane and supplied by Brazilian company Braskem, a leading producer of bio-based plastics. [The plastic is made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) made from ethanol produced from sugar cane.]
According to Tetra Pak, the handling characteristics of the package remain unchanged and can be recycled in the same way as standard carton packages.
The renewable package is not biodegradable.
In April, Sweden's Arla Food’ introduced the Tetra Rex Bio-based carton for its Eko brand organic milk coupled with Tetra-Pak's Twist Cap OSO 24 made from bio-based materials, also derived from sugar cane.
