For a long time, food packaging has been around, but whilst this provides benefits to the lifetime of the food and human health, it incurs harmful effects for the environment due to the amount of plastic within the packaging. However, an innovative breakthrough from YUTOECO has changed this and made a significant improvement to the packaging industry.

The previous variety of food packaging before the moulded pulp packaging, came with multiple issues for consumers and the environment. Customers complained that the packaged product needed to be visible to the consumer, but this brought issues of an excessive use and reliance on plastic. This meant that solving the customer's issue created an issue for the environment but making the packaging more environmentally friendly created visibility issues for the customer. Whilst this issue might have been solved through making the packaging recyclable, unfortunately the global plastic recycling scheme is simply not effective enough to ensure that all the packaging produced with some plastic will be efficiently recycled, creating a heavy negative impact on the environment.

Therefore, the development of the moulded pulp packaging industry is an important breakthrough which is drawing a lot of attention and driving the sustainability industry forwards, through its inventive and innovative designs. The designs involve a container which efficiently packages the food, whilst also providing visibility to the consumer, through the functional transparent film which is manufactured out of 100% cellulose substrate.

This design encourages industry transformation through its multiple benefits, which include sustainability, visibility of packaging which is also food-grade and meets requirements of food contact materials. This combination means that the food safety is ensured, whilst also providing the customer with the visibility that is required. The plant-based lucent membrane demonstrates excellent performance, through being non-toxic, odourless and free from halogens. The design also has well-constructed mechanical properties, plus suitable surface tension which results in better protection. Other benefits of this innovative material include anti-fog, waterproof and heat-sealing abilities, and it can do all this whilst maintaining transparency.

So far, the new material has been applied to one of YUTOECO’s clients and the company have introduced a range of products that this packaging containing plant-based cellulose film can be utilised for. These products include, visible lunchboxes, baking packaging, and pharmaceutical packaging. This development proves the sustainability of moulded fibre packaging, and it also brings new opportunities and possibilities to the whole industry. These new designs show that a solution to two issues, even where one solution causes the other issue and vice versa, can be found through research and experimenting. The development also displays how important sustainability and innovation values are within the plastic and packaging market.

The groundbreaking advancements this company has made has been recognised in a "NO PLASTICS" Report from the third-party testing lab, and Industrial & Home Compostable Certificates (Seedling) from DIN Certco. The report remarked on the new design’s eco-friendly qualities, including its ability to efficiently degrade in soil and cause no secondary pollution even throughout this process. This highlights that this product is incredibly environmentally friendly and is both a green product and due to the lack of plastic in it, has a very green manufacturing process too.

The next plans for YUTOECO will be focused on continuously packaging R&D, plus promoting more innovative and sustainable products to the market. They aim to drive more innovations and sustainability solutions from the pulp moulding packaging industry, toward the market, creating a greener and more sustainable future.