In a major breakthrough for the Australian pallet wrap market, Melbourne-based material science company Great Wrap has launched the world's first compostable pallet wrap manufactured using food waste. Multinational brand owners and large retail groups both here and in the USA have snapped up trial batches.
With commercial trials completed, the company's 10,000sqm Tullamarine site, will soon house the largest stretch wrap manufacturing facility in the country. The plant, equipped with a state-of-the art cast extruding line for the film, is currently running at 5000T capacity. By year end, the company confirms, capacity will have reached 10,000T, and 20,000T by 2025.
The food waste used for the wrap, derived from potatoes and sourced from two of the country's biggest potato producers, is currently not processed on site. The next important step, Great Wrap co-founder Julia Kay told PKN, will be to get the biorefinery running on site, and also to scale up an end-of-life collection service for the pallet wrap to create a fully circular solution.
Kay confirmed the plan is to open the biorefinery by 2025 to convert local potato waste into 20,000 tonnes of PHA. PHA is a marine degradable material made from microorganisms metabolising potato waste.
Great Wrap's stretch wrap is certified home compostable, and according to the company, when it is composted and returned to soil it can decrease Australia’s carbon footprint by over 100,000 tonnes every year by lowering our dependence on fossil fuels.
The company said this latest innovation can solve the plastic pollution problem as it can be composted or repurposed to create new materials and returned to the soil to add microbial value to agricultural land.
Bringing this stretch wrap capacity onshore in Australia will significantly reduce the amount of stretch wrap material imported.
Jordy Kay, co-founder of Great Wrap, said, “We’ve completed commercial trials with major Australian retailers, food and beverage manufacturers and household name brands, and their feedback is consistent – Great Wrap performs as well as petroleum-based pallet wrap. We’re calling on all Australian business owners to switch because the high-quality product means the only shift is where they purchase it.”
With encouraging levels of interest in its stretch wrap from major US retailers, Great Wrap also has its sights set on the US market. In 2022, it launched its direct-to-consumer line in the US.
“We would have to set up a manufacturing facility in the US to service this market,” Julia Kay said, noting that the lead time on the manufacturing equipment is at least 12 months, so the time line is beyond 2024.
“We’ve had a huge demand building over the past three years from businesses far and wide. Most businesses, whether you know it or not, are using petroleum-based pallet wrap to send and receive their goods. This product is unavoidable, it is essential, and it's a global problem that we are solving.”
According to Great Wrap, in this country alone, we send over 100,000 tonnes of stretch wrap to landfill each year, including cling wrap, catering wrap, silage wrap and pallet wrap. Pallet wrap, the connector of all businesses, is a critical part of the global supply chain. Every day millions of pallets are wrapped to transport goods to their eventual consumer. Unfortunately, very few facilities can recycle petroleum-based pallet wrap — meaning more than 90 per cent goes to landfill.
This article first appeared on PKN Packaging News.
