SternMaid has added flexible filling equipment for spiral-wound cardboard cans at one of its packaging lines. Besides the traditional tinplate bottoms, the cans can now be closed with a cardboard base to make them 95% recyclable.
According to the EU packaging directive of 2019, more raw materials from packaging must be recovered and re-used. The prescribed recycling quota for paper, for example, is now 80% and will be raised to 90% as of 2022.
“In order to keep pace with this development, we have chosen to invest in cardboard can bottoms as an optional alternative closure”, Mark Riemer, Commercial Director of SternMaid, said. “That greatly improves their recyclability. The traditional seal, a permanently seamed-on tinplate bottom, posed a major problem in the reprocessing of recyclable materials.”
Since the can body with a cardboard bottom consists of more than 95% paper and the interior and exterior lamination is very thin, it may be disposed of along with waste paper. This will also allow for cans of a lower weight: an empty can with a cardboard bottom, a diameter of 99 mm and a height of 180 mm, for example, is about 13.6 percent lighter than the same can with a tinplate base.
