– to establish a traceable and sustainable recycling process.
Essel Propack, part of the USD 4.2 billion “Essel Group”, with FY17 turnover of over USD 368 million, is the largest specialty packaging global company. The laminated plastic tubes manufactured by Essel Propack cater to the FMCG and Pharma space. Employing over 2852 people representing 25 different nationalities, Essel Propack functions through 20 state of the art facilities and is present in 11 countries, selling over 7 billion tubes and growing every year.
Holding Oral care market share of 36% in volume terms globally, company’s manufacturing facilities cater to diverse categories that include brands in Beauty & Cosmetics, Pharma & Health, Food, Oral care and Home, offering customized solutions through continuously pioneering first-in-class innovations in materials, technology and processes.
Project Liberty is a first of its kind and path breaking attempt to recycle multilayer laminates which consists of aluminium in the structure, by separating aluminium and polymer into two distinct and reusable streams without the use of chemicals or heat.
In this effort, Essel has collaborated with multiple major technical partners across the globe and co-developed a solid state environmental friendly process to liberate aluminium from the laminate/tubes.
ABL poses challenges in recycling and the company has been working relentlessly over the last 4 years, on developing a solution to separate the polymer and aluminium. Essel uses two basic structures to make laminated tubes :
- Plastic Barrier Laminates (PBL) tubes – made of all Plastic layers and are easily recyclable
- Aluminium Barrier Laminate (ABL) tubes – made with combination of polymers and has aluminium foil as the barrier layer.
The main objective of launching Project Liberty is to establish a traceable and sustainable recycling process, which will not only fulfil company’s vision of “every single tube made by Essel is recyclable” but will also help all its partners across the value chain including the Brand Owners, in achieving their sustainability goals/commitments to their stake holders.
With Project ‘Liberty’, the polymer fraction can be recovered from ABL tubes and the same can be recycled to various applications. The recovered aluminium metal also shall go as metal scrap for re-use, thereby making every single tube recyclable.
The Project will be implemented in 2 Phases. It shall begin with India where:
In Phase-I: The Company will recycle its own tubes and laminate scrap, for which it will be ready by the end of this year.
In Phase-II: Essel will offer the re-cycling facility to its customers and partner with Brand owners to regulate the post consumer tubes and offer for recycling.
Gradually, in subsequent phases, it shall roll out such facilities globally.
As a responsible company, Essel Propack has always strived hard towards achieving better sustainability. Some of company’s other initiatives that have been acclaimed and used by its customers are:
a)
Etain – Tubes made with upto 25% Post-Consumer recycled resin content, promoting the use of PCR resins, reducing the demand for virgin raw materials.
b) Green Maple Leaf – PE based recyclable barrier tubes with HDPE caps that can be 100% recycled in to C2 HDPE recycle stream. This laminate is one of its kinds globally and has recently been awarded under the “sustainability” category by the American Tube Council.
c) Super Titanium – Tubes designed with better stiffness to enable reduction in web thickness without compromising on other functional requirement enabling source reduction.
