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Sugarcane bagasse, a new era for paper and sugar packaging

Creating value to meet consumer needs is the purpose that motivates Litoplas and its customers every day to develop initiatives that have a positive impact on the planet and that meet the people’s expectations.

Previously, stick-packs were made with imported paper.
That paper was made from pine trees with a polyethylene coating. Even though it is a resistant fiber, it contributes to deforestation and consequently has a negative impact on the environment.
Because it was imported, it had undesirable effects on the value chain, such as slow time-to-market lead times (waiting for imports during peak periods) and high inventories.

In view of this, we decided to
enter into a partnership
with our main sugar producing partners to develop paper made from sugarcane bagasse (a byproduct from sugar cane milling),
a raw material that is transformed into 100% natural paper,
and because it is an agro-industrial waste, it can be renewed in short time periods at fair prices.
Through this initiative we contribute to the preservation of forests, reducing water consumption and saving energy.

This is how the opportunity emerged to use what once was considered waste and reincorporate it in the economy in a circular manner, while at the same time achieving local sourcing and reducing production lead times.

As with any innovation, it comes with new challenges, and in this case the paper material had weaker mechanical features (short and less resistant fibers), and since it was not coated, the appearance of ink printing was not optimal.

Litoplas took on the challenge, and jointly with PLAXI, we developed a formula to offset the mechanical weakness of the paper and allow its machinability to enable its use in our customers’ packaging.

Paper made from sugarcane bagasse has more air within its structure (normal paper usually has a density greater than 1 g/cm3, whereas sugarcane bagasse paper has a density of around 0.7 g/cm3).
For this reason we had to develop PLAXI with a process that used lower initial temperature during the sealing process to seal the packages at lower temperatures.

At the same time, the customers developed a design that enabled maintaining the integrity of the brand despite the lower print quality due to the absence of the coating used in the past.
We knew that sacrificing a bit of the graphic quality was fair, as long as we could bring to market a more sustainable package that would further this collective purpose of caring for the planet.

Today customers are using this sugarcane bagasse paper produced in Cali, using the same packaging equipment they used before and with lighter supply chain logistics capable of responding quickly to market needs.

This was achieved thanks to collaborative work with all the value chain to transform the product towards a more productive solution.

 

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