President of the Bioplastics Association Alan Adams and keynote speaker at the inaugural National Packaging Summit (25-26 August) told the industry that bioplastics are coming and have a viable place in our society.
As president of the Australasian Bioplastics Association (ABA) Alan Adams is responsible for ensuring the organisation meets the direction and goals agreed upon by members.
“The ABA’s vision is to enable consumers to recognise compostable packaging, to understand what that means and have access to the infrastructure to bio recover these materials in a valuable way,” he says.
“Our primary role is to facilitate the adoption of Bioplastics into our region.
"We do this by providing an industry forum for discussion on direction, setting up the Seedling logo system to enable recognition and control of the compostable class of packaging, providing an independent view of Bioplastics and providing a central information source on this new and rapidly developing class of packaging materials.”
Adams, who is also Sales & Marketing manager for Innovia films, says Innovia aims to be a key partner supplier to its customers with solutions that add value to Innovia, its customers and their customers.
“We act as a consultant in specialty packaging areas to the industry as a whole,” he explains.
“The majority of Australasian Bioplastics members products are manufactured with high level of biomass materials which is moving packaging away from non-sustainable oil based products.
“At Innovia Films we see bioplastics as a big part of our future. Our material NatureFlex™ is typically 95 per cent or more sustainable material based (wood pulp) and certified carbon neutral to the end of our manufacturing processes.
"This range of materials is growing rapidly and we are supporting development of this category of materials.”
According to Adams, the reduction of local manufacturing with increasing imports of finished good and packaging remains a significant issue.
“Both the ABA and Innovia Films want to see the packaging industry of Australia leveraging its ability to provide effective valuable solutions to the wider industry we supply as well as offer the flexibility to minimise not just unit cost but total business cost to our customers and end users. Doing this will ensure the industry remains viable and Australian based.”
In addition Adams points to balancing environmental concerns with convenience as an issue that has a big impact on the packaging industry as these issues effectively pull packaging choices in opposite directions.
To be a successful, Adams maintains packaging companies must partner with customers and end users. “In this way we can deliver value adding solutions and together with an open book approach we can work out best practices that will maximize returns for both parties,” he says.
“There is less and less room for an ‘us and them approach’ to customers.”
Adams, who remembers an award won by Innovia Films and Cadbury from the Confectionary Manufacturers Association for Innovation in compostable packaging as the company's proudest achievement, believes bioplastics made from oil alternatives will continue to gain momentum rapidly.
“Differentiated packaging to appeal to consumer groups rather than ‘one pack serves all’ will also be a significant trend such as within the organic produce sector,” he adds. “Packaging as a medium for educating will be expanded, for example there will be more information on ripeness and quality of produce.
Adams also sees self regulation within the packaging industry through the National Packaging Covenant (NPC) as yielding some great results.
“This style of industry lead change is important and should continue,” he enthuses. “The NPC will evolve into the future to represent changing trends and needs of the industry.
"The initial mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle now needs expansion to include drivers for step change technologies like Bioplastics and to bring sustainable economic outcomes for recycling.
"Recycle could be replaced by Recover. Recovering value from used packaging should be our aim.”
Alan Adams was a keynote speaker at the National Packaging Summit at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne 25-26 August.
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