Beet paper packaging for industrial customers
Cosun Beet Company has taken a huge step forwards to using sustainable sugar beet paper in industrial 25 kg bags. Zeelandia, an international manufacturer of bread and pastry ingredients, has tested the bags. With a 100% positive result!
Sustainable packaging material made from sugar beet passes Zeelandia test with flying colours
Sugar beet paper is a breakthrough innovation developed by Cosun Beet Company and paper manufacturer Crown Van Gelder. Known as Crown Native, the paper is made using beet pulp, a by-product of sugar refining. As a sustainable replacement for wood fibre, it has a significantly lower environmental footprint across the board: from reducing CO2 emissions and particulate matter formation to cutting agricultural acreage and transport movements as the beet are grown locally.
Van Gilse’s 1 kg bags will also be packed in sugar beet paper with 20% sugar beet fibre as from this spring. For the industrial market, 25 kg bags have been developed with this sugar beet paper. To determine whether they behave like standard bags during their life-cycle at customers, a series of tests are being carried out in cooperation with Zeelandia. The bags have come through the first round of tests with flying colours. A second, bigger test will be carried out soon.
“The story immediately appealed to me,” says Zeelandia’s packaging expert, Niels Steenblok, “perhaps because my parents used to be sugar beet growers. At Zeelandia, the sustainability of our activities is a continuous focus. So we eagerly welcomed this innovation by Cosun Beet Company and offered to test the beet paper. A 25 kg bag of sugar goes through a lot when it’s delivered to us. Because it’s handled so many times, we need to know how it will behave. Is the bag easy to open? Is the paper strong enough? And air tight enough that a full bag can be gripped by a vacuum lifter? Is the paper not so smooth that it will slip off a pallet? Our conclusion: the bags meet all our requirements!”
Great story
Ricky van Beers, business development manager at Cosun Beet Company, is pleased with the result. “Eventually, we want all our packaging materials to switch to sugar beet paper in a tightly controlled and phased process.”
He agrees with Niels Steenblok that beet paper, in which the fibres can be seen, is a great story about how to turn residual flows into a valuable product. “A special logo will highlight that the packaging is made using sugar beet. It will also include a link to a website with more information about this sustainable packaging material.”
For more information, contact Ricky van Beers at ricky.van.beers@cosunbeetcompany.com.