With a cross-industry initiative, German papermaker Koehler Paper – part of the family-run Koehler Group – has lit the beacon for increased cooperation along the packaging industry’s entire value chain, with its inaugural Paper Packaging Forum. More than 50 attendees, including branded companies, converters, machine manufacturers, and associations, took the company up on its invitation to jointly discuss current challenges and develop solutions that will make it possible to launch paper-based packaging more quickly. The forum provides a platform designed to help push forward the packaging industry’s transformation into a supplier of recyclable solutions for circular economies.
Shaping Change Together
“We purposely created this initiative to enable raw material suppliers, converters, brand owners, and other stakeholders in the packaging industry to have an open conversation. The goal was to get a better mutual understanding of all our respective needs and jointly develop strategies to establish paper packaging as the recycling and future-proof packaging material of choice on the market,” explains Christoph Wachter, Director Flexible Packaging Paper Division, Koehler Paper.
In addition to a fascinating keynote speech by McKinsey that contextualised both the role and future of paper packaging in the market, attendees were able to discuss the needs of each market participant and the material property requirements for packaging paper in interactive workshops. This activity yielded three concrete areas of action: improving functional barrier properties further, ensuring industrial recyclability, and speeding up scaling and market launch efforts. The discussion concluded with a clear consensus that cross-industry, interdisciplinary cooperation is the only way to accelerate the implementation of paper-based packaging solutions.
To round off the day, attendees gained an exclusive insight into Nestlé’s paperisation journey, followed by an exclusive guided tour of Koehler Paper’s cutting-edge production line 8 in Kehl where the innovative Koehler NexPlus packaging paper products with functional barriers are manufactured.
“Flexible packaging paper will not be a short-lived trend, and instead is part of a structural transformation in the direction of truly recyclable packaging. We see it as our responsibility to play a proactive role in shaping this development and working together with partners along the entire value chain in order to get it implemented on an industrial scale,” adds Koehler Group COO Dr. Stefan Karrer.
