The contract manufacturer SternMaid has modernized one of its packaging lines for various powdered products by adding flexible filling equipment with an environment-friendly closure option for spiral-wound cardboard cans. Besides the classic tinplate bottoms, the cans can now be closed with a cardboard base to make them over 95 % recyclable.

According to the new 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.

Mark Riemer, Commercial Director of SternMaid, explains: “In order to keep pace with this development, we have chosen to invest in cardboard can bottoms as an optional alternative closure. This 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 over 95 % paper and the interior and exterior lamination is very thin, it may be disposed of along with waste paper. A further advantage is its lower weight: an empty can with a cardboard bottom, a diameter of 99 mm and a height of 180 mm, for example, is about 14 % lighter than the same can with a tinplate base.