Shrink sleeves have been eagerly embraced by the beverage industry. The reason’s not hard to find: shrink sleeves offer 360 degree design capabilities, which not only enables product differentiation on shelves, but provides space for strategic brand messages or nutritional information. Plus, these sleeves are flexible and strong, conforming exactly to the container.
Durirng recycling, however, care must be taken to remove the sleeves from the bottles at the washing stage to avoid contamination of the PET recycling stream.
Spain-based Emsur has now launched a new family of sleeves, dubbed Ecoem, that are based on eco-design principles, the company explained. The new sleeves, developed at the company’s Technology Innovation Centre INNOTECH, comprise a range of solutions for bottled carbonated drinks, water, juice or drinkable yogurts.
One option is the Ecoem-Full PET Sleeve, based on a combination of films and washable inks designed to simplify the recycling process by avoiding any type of residues or contamination.
It can be mixed and recycled with PET bottles without any residue clumping or interruption in the drying and decontamination process. Made from post-consumer recycled content, it has APR certification for washable inks, preventing discolouration of the flakes from the recycled PET bottles.
The range also includes Emfull, a polyolefin-based sleeve option whose floatability properties allow the sleeve to be separated directly from the bottle during the washing phase of the recycling process. Other options include sleeves produced, for example, from PETG, incorporating post-consumer recycled content and different types of finishes such as high gloss or matt, transparent and other differentiating elements such as holographic effects, glow-in-the-dark pigments, gold and silver inks.
Moreover, the company also offers sleeves with micro perforations, making it possible for consumers to remove these manually prior to recycling.
Emsur is the Grupo Lantero division dedicated to the manufacture of flexible containers for packaging solutions primarily designed for the food and beverages sector. The company currently has 9 production sites and is active in more than 60 countries. Emsur produces almost 900 million square metres of sleeves, lids, labels, die-cuts, bags and other flexible products.