Highland Plastics to Use Cardia’s Biohybrid Resins

Highland Plastics, manufacturer of injection moulded food-grade plastic packaging, will offer packaging products that use Cardia Biohybrid resin technology that can increase packaging’s renewable content by up to 50 percent, Cardia says.

Cardia Biohybrid proprietary technology combines renewable thermoplastics with polyolefin material, which produces products with a lower carbon footprint compared to traditional plastics, Cardia says. The company’s resins are adaptable to a broad range of packaging applications, including flexible film (shrink wrap, shopping bags and waste bags), injection moulding (closures, utensils and pens), blow moulding (bottles and containers), foam, extrusion and coatings (cartons and indoor signage).

In addition to its Biohybrid resins, Cardia also provides compostable resins for packaging and plastic products.

The collaboration with Highland Plastics follows Cardia’s announcements of its supply agreements for compostable juicer bags with US appliance maker Breville and Biohybrid kitchen waste bags with Shanghai Pudong City in China earlier this year.

Last week, the Co-operative announced it has reduced the weight of its own-brand wine bottles, saving 725 metric tons of glass and more than 556 metric tons of CO2 per year. The UK grocery chain worked with its supplier, Kingsland Wines and Spirits, on lightweighting the glass bottles.

Some 65 percent of decision makers at Fortune 500 consumer product companies say sustainable packaging is a high priority, according to research commissioned by the Steel Market Development Institute. The challenge for consumer products firms, according to the research, is the lack of meaningful information available to evaluate and compare the sustainability performance of competitive packaging materials.