Collaboration on bio-based packaging for seaweed snack

Neste, Mitsui Chemicals and Prime Polymer, a subsidiary of Mitsui Chemicals, collaborate to provide more sustainable food packaging solutions for CO-OP, a brand of the Japanese Consumers Co-operative Union (JCCU).

In the first phase of the collaboration, bio-based raw materials will be used to replace fossil ones in the production of packaging material for a seaweed snack. The collaboration will also introduce bio-based raw materials to packaging for further products.

Bio-based raw materials are used to produce the packaging for seaweed snack.

Neste provides renewable Neste RE, a feedstock for polymers that is made entirely from bio-based raw materials. Through Mitsui Chemicals and its subsidiary Prime Polymer, the feedstock is processed into renewable polypropylene under the brand name Prasus, which is then turned into food packaging for JCCU.

The packaging made with renewable materials is with the same quality and performance as previous one produced from fossil feedstock, with an additional advantage of carbon footprint reduction during its production.

A mass balancing approach is applied to allocate the renewable material to the plastic packaging. The seaweed snack packaging is the first packaging made with renewable plastics via mass balancing that has received the Japanese Eco Mark certification.

Lilyana Budyanto, Head of Sustainable Partnerships APAC at Neste’s Renewable Polymers and Chemicals business unit, concluded that renewable plastics packaging is a crucial contributor to the sustainability transformation of the plastics industry and reducing emissions along the value chain.