Sabic, a global leader in the chemical industry, has joined forces with Heinz, Tesco and Berry in an innovative recycling trial in the UK, designed to close the loop on soft plastic food packaging.

Flexible plastic packaging collected from Tesco stores has been used to produce certified circular polypropylene (PP) from Sabic’s Trucircle portfolio for microwavable Heinz Beanz Snap Pots, made from 39 per cent recycled soft plastic.

Consumers are encouraged to return soft plastic packaging to collection points set up at Tesco stores. A portion of this collected plastic packaging is converted into recycled oils, called TACOIL, through a thermal anaerobic conversion process. Sabic uses the oil to produce certified circular polypropylene of the same quality as virgin resin.

As part of a closed-loop recycling trial, consumers return used soft plastic packaging to collection points set up at Tesco stores

With these polymer pellets, Berry Global, a leading supplier of innovative packaging solutions, then manufactures the new Beanz Snap Pots and sends them to Heinz for filling with Beanz and delivery to Tesco. Once emptied, the pots and sleeves can be returned to kerbside collection points.

The collaboration aligns with Sabic’s Trucircle program and the company’s commitment to drive the transformation of the plastic packaging economy towards circularity. “We are happy to reaffirm our role as a provider of unique circular solutions,” stated Lada Kurelec, General Manager PP, PET, PS, PVC, PU & Elastomers Businesses for Petrochemicals at Sabic.

“Next to the material know-how, we have brought value chain partners together and provided crucial elements such as support with certification processes or life-cycle assessment calculations, all while helping to prevent valuable used plastics from being lost to landfill or incineration.”

The Snap Pots recycling trial is part of Heinz’s global pledge aimed at making 100 per cent of its packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025.

Jojo de Noronha, President Northern Europe at Heinz, said: “We’re proud to have teamed up with experts in the field of advanced recycling and sustainable packaging to bring this important innovation to our customers. Our hope is that this prompts an industry-wide look at what more can be done to address the lack of soft plastics being recycled in the UK, and we can, as a collective, get better when it comes to developing new packaging solutions that are both good for both our consumers and for our planet.”

Jean-Marc Galvez, President of Berry Global’s Consumer Packaging International Division, said: “This is a prime example of an innovative advancement in circular packaging design made possible by collaboration across the entire value chain. This type of circular approach helps capture and reuse plastics that currently go unrecycled to keep materials in use and out of our oceans and landfills.”

To date flexible packaging has been difficult to recycle, and until 2020 just 6 per cent of soft plastic packaging was being recycled in the UK. Tesco started collecting soft plastic in all its large stores in 2021 to help plug this recycling gap in the UK. The Heinz and Tesco project with certified circular polymer from Sabic is considered a breakthrough with the potential of a real game changer.

James Bull, Tesco’s Head of Packaging, said: “This innovative collaboration is one of the ways that soft plastic returned to stores by our customers will be recycled into new food-grade packaging. After doing everything we can to remove and reduce plastic, we want to develop circular recycling solutions so that used packaging can be recycled back into packaging again.”