Page 60 - Food & Drink magazine June 2021

FOODPRO IN-DEPTH
STAND K✷24
Keeping label liners from landfill with new tech
leading provider, producer, and installer of insulation products.
“This is exciting news for Labelmakers Group, RecuLiner, Enviroflex and the entire label industry because this aligns us and our customers with APCO’s 2025 National Packaging Targets for recycling and re-use of packaging materials,” says Adam Bamford, managing director of Labelmakers Group. “We expect to start onboarding customers in July this year with scale-up planned over the next 12-24 months.”
Bamford adds, “This local manufacturing arrangement will kick-start a new recycling opportunity in Australia, with job creation and landfill diversion as the core of the program. Labelmakers will be focusing on the rollout across New Zealand in due course.”
The collection of spent glassine liner from customer sites will be managed through a newly created department of the group, called Labelmakers Liner Recycling Services.
Enviroflex CEO Felicia Richardson says, “There are so many exciting facets to this new
Labelmakers, the country’s largest label converter, has secured the rights to use the globally patented Reculiner technology in Australia and New Zealand to create a local solution for recycling glassine liner from pressure sensitive labels, which would otherwise go to landfill. Lindy Hughson reports.
RECYCLING of glassine liner is a global problem and there are only a few locations around the world with the technology required to remove the silicone from the glassine paper. This means that glassine liner has historically been banished to landfill.
To date, liner recovery has focused on collection and exporting to overseas markets, which Labelmakers says is “heavily emissions intensive”. Tonnes of waste pressure sensitive material go into landfill each year.
In Australia alone, and at an industry level, it is estimated that this translates to 10,000 tonnes of landfill associated with pressure-sensitive labels, according to Labelmakers.
Labelmakers says it has long held the position that a local solution is the only real solution and, to this end, has secured the
RecuLiner patented technology for the region.
The RecuLiner technology allows the conversion of glassine liner into insulation products for the commercial and residential building industry, with scope for other
60 | Food&Drink business | June 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
“ This local manufacturing arrangement will kick-start a new recycling opportunity in Australia, with job creation and landfill diversion as the core of the program.”
– Adam Bamford, MD, Labelmakers Group.
market applications as well.
To deliver the solution in this
market, Labelmakers has entered exclusive and long-term manufacturing arrangements by licensing the technology to fellow Australian business Enviroflex Commercial, a
partnership but from a scale-up perspective, the insulation channels to market already exists so we don’t have the time lag associated with developing a new market or customer.
“We intend to commence manufacture in July 2021, which