Page 32 - Food&Drink March 2022

PACKAGING & LABELLING
Start-up Plantabl launched Great Wrap, Australia’s first and only compostable stretch wrap, just two years ago. With a pallet wrap in the wings, a $500k grant is helping project the business onto the global stage. Kim Berry reports.
All wrapped up
TOP & BOTTOM:
Great Wrap founders Julia and Jordy Kay are determined that one third of Australia’s annual cling wrap will be Great Wrap by 2023.
BELOW: Jordy Kay inspects the material as they get ready to launch a pallet wrap product.
IN the latest funding round of the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre’s (AMGC)
$30 million Commercialisation Fund, Plantabl received almost $535,000.
The grant will go towards the company’s $6.41 million project to commercialise and manufacture Great Wrap’s biopolymer resin (cling wrap).
The material is derived from organic waste that is turned into a compostable stretch wrap that can replace plastic cling, silage, and pallet wraps.
Founding the company only
Between the two of us, in our different industries, we were using a disgusting amount of pallet wrap in our operations,” Jordy Kay says.
Julia Kay says said the AMGC funds will enable the business to commercialise and manufacture the compostable stretch wrap on a national scale.
“By its final commissioning in 2023, the project will have created more than 100 jobs at Great Wrap, spanning across advanced manufacturing, engineering, research, sales and marketing.
“It will enormously decrease Australians’ dependency on petroleum-based stretch wrap, and it will convert over 50,000 tonnes of local food waste into domestic and industrial products,” Julia Kay says.
She explains that one large winery alone will use more than 50,000 kilometres in wrap each year, enough to circumnavigate the world.
The wrap is made mostly from potato waste and the remaining materials are all certified compostable. This means it breaks down into carbon and water in less than 180 days in commercial and home compost systems, leaving zero microplastics behind.
The investment will also enable its factory to remove 400,000 tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent of taking nearly 100,000 cars off the road – that would normally have been released every year.
“Cling wrap is a convenient everyday essential that’s market has remained uninterrupted since the 1940s. Australia alone goes through 150,000 tonnes of stretch wrap each year. We are on a mission to turn a third
of that into Great Wrap by 2023,” she says.
Jordy Kay adds it is a shift commercial industries have never experienced.
“We are providing an easy solution for businesses to eliminate single-use plastics from their supply chain that will help their operations close the loop and reach NetZero.
“We are trying to create a roadmap to get to the point where petroleum-based plastic will no longer exist in the supply chain in the form we know today,” he says.
From launching the company with just each other, the Kays have employed 35 people, invested in two production machines with a third on its way.
Jordy Kay says, “We raised
$3 million in a seed raise and have worked closely with Monash University and our own R&D team to fast track a commercial scale project.
“This year, we plan to expand internationally and continue to grow exponentially,” he says.
As the expectation on businesses to adopt a circular economy increases, Plantabl plans to be ready to have at least one part of the equation all wrapped up. ✷
“ Commercial industries haven’t seen a shift like this, ever. We are providing an easy solution for businesses to eliminate single-use plastics from their supply chain.”
two years ago, husband and wife team Jordy and Julia Kay developed their formula using food waste rather than plant-based materials.
They started with a retail product and recently launched the world’s first certified compostable catering wrap. The business is now accepting pre-orders for its latest development, pallet wrap.
“I started as a winemaker and Julia was an architect.
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