AmPrima® Recycle-Ready Solutions, now available in Europe

Today, thanks to increased media attention, corporate commitments and consumers' environmental concerns, brands are recognizing the need to act on sustainability. More sustainable packaging is one way for them to adress expectations on corporate responsability.

More than three quarters (76%) of consumers across the UK, Germany, Australia, China, and Brazil find recyclability the most important sustainability attribute for packaging, according to Amcor research. They want to recycle more, and they want brands to help them. In fact, 83% want brands to make it clearer how to recycle their packaging.

To meet this demand for more recyclability, Amcor launched a recycle-ready solutions portfolio, AmPrima®, in the US in 2020. AmPrima® meets all the performance expectations of non-recyclable laminates, in a recycle-ready format. The launch was a huge success and in August 2020, AmPrima® received the Association of Plastics Recyclers’ (APR’s) Responsible Innovation Acknowledgement.

In March 2022, Amcor brought AmPrima® to Europe. Coffee, dairy, snacks, and home and personal care (HPC) brands across Europe are now benefitting from more sustainable packaging. AmPrima® enables a smooth transition, while maintaining production efficiency and enhancing brand appeal.

Why the time is now to transition to more sustainable packaging

The expansion of AmPrima® to Europe can help companies derive value from their sustainability efforts. With sustainability packaging regulations being rolled out across Europe, brands need to adapt their product offerings to minimize possible tax penalties and participate in reshaping the future of packaging.

For example, the UK Plastics Pact, led by WRAP, sets targets for UK plastic packaging to be 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and 70% of plastic packaging to be recycled in practice, by 2025. Meeting these ambitious but achievable targets requires a step-change in product packaging, including designing packaging for optimal recyclability and increasing the use of recycled content.

Another change coming up is the revision of the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD). The PPWD requires Member States to set up “systems” for return and/or collection of used packaging for reuse or recovery, including recycling, in order to meet the PPWD’s targets.The revision of the PPWD will establish the waste hierarchy, set a definition for “recycling” and introduce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). The deadline for EPR implementation is set for 2024 in the European Union.

We encourage brands to start looking for opportunities to use more sustainable packaging, design for recyclability and introduce recycled content as soon as they can. To get you started on this transition, you can take advantage of using ASSET™, Amcor’s in-house life-cycle assessment tool certified by The Carbon Trust. ASSET ™ will give you the data you need this understand the often invisible impact of your pack. You can compare, for example, the performance of our AmPrima® recycle-ready films, against a typically-used equivalent solution.

Making the switch to a packaging solution that is recycle-ready in most European countries will help you get ahead of upcoming changes to the legislation and pursue your sustainability goals.

Supporting brands on their Sustainability journey

Being suited for the future of packaging sustainability isn’t the only benefit of our AmPrima® recycle-ready range.

The AmPrima® portfolio is currently available in a range of PE and PP formats, targeting even the most demanding applications in terms of product protection, packaging convenience and runnability on packaging lines.

AmPrima® employs a variety of technologies including proprietary techniques unavailable elsewhere. This delivers the heat resistance, stiffness, clarity, graphics performance and run speeds that brands demand, matching the performance of current unrecyclable alternatives in the vast majority of cases.

AmPrima® PE Plus for roast and ground coffee is suited for all typical coffee pack formats and sizes, and is available with both lock/seal and peel options to protect freshness and aroma. According to our analysis, it has the potential to replace over 200 current non-recyclable coffee packaging specifications. For example, a coffee customer that switches from a PET/Alu/PE structure to an AmPrima® PE-based soft pack can benefit from an up to 73% carbon footprint reduction, a 68 % reduction in non-renewable primary energy usage and an 85% reduction in water consumption. The plastic reduction compared to similar standard coffee soft packaging currently on the market in Europe is between 15 and 20%.

AmPrima® solutions for cheese are also available in a variety of formats including flow wrap for hard cheeses, pouches for grated, and even flow-packs for leak-prone cheeses such as mozzarella. This allows brands to choose a full PE solution with robust product protection, that fits the requirements of most European PE recycling streams.

AmPrima® pouches for Home and Personal care applications support refill products for rigid containers and offer up to 90% packaging weight reduction, as well as an up to 65 % lower carbon footprint. And to improve circularity, AmPrima® for Home and personal care has the option to include post-consumer recycled (PCR) content.

The AmPrima® recycle-ready range is designed according to CEFLEX guidelines for circularity and certified by cyclos-HTP for recyclability in the real world.

AmPrima® is a more sustainable choice today, and is future-ready for more environmental benefits to come. Our Amcor packaging experts are here to support you on your journey to a simpler packaging structure, making the changeover to AmPrima® as seamless as possible.

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The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is a European Union regulation to reduce packaging pollution and help build a circular economy for packaging. If approved, the new regulation would mean that by 2030 all packaging on the EU market must be designed to be recyclable (i.e. recycle-ready). Download our guide and timeline to learn more.