At this year’s FachPack trade show in Nuremberg, Germany, the KHS Group was presented with the Green Star Packaging Award for its innovative packaging system. Nature MultiPack, which holds cans together with dots of adhesive, won in the Product category. The Green Star Packaging Award honors environment-friendly packaging and recycling and improvements in operational packaging-related processes. Winners of the prize are entitled to participate in the WorldStar Award.
“Winning this award is a wonderful confirmation of the sustainability of our innovations,” says Christoph Georg von Aichinger, senior sales director of NMP Systems GmbH. “Developing environmentally friendly products is very important to us. This is why we’re especially pleased to receive this award.”
Sustainability and innovation as goals
The pioneering style of packaging combines innovation and sustainability. The Nature MultiPack marketed by NMP Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of KHS, groups beverage containers into a stable, easily ‘openable’ or separable pack using dots of adhesive rather than shrink film. In addition to the recent award-winning version for cans, which can be formed into multipacks of 1 x 3, 1 x 4, 2 x 2, 2 x 3 and 2 x 4, PET bottles can also be grouped in this way into packs of 2 x 2 and 2 x 3. A convenient carrying handle helps to keep the pack stable, and the individual alignment of the respective containers communicate effective marketing messages. The new packaging has also been designed to withstand transportation and marketing logistics while allowing the consumer to easily remove the individual containers from the multipack.
Materials and energy saved by the Nature MultiPack
Compared to containers classically packed in film, the Nature MultiPack not only saves on packaging materials but also on energy; the KHS packaging system requires up to 85% less material than the conventional multipack and reduces energy consumption during production by a maximum of 67%.
In 2016, the Nature MultiPack won the German Design Award for outstanding communication design and sustainable packaging. The KHS Group has also been presented with the German Sustainability Award for its packaging system. A further milestone was the European PET Bottle Platform issuing preliminary confirmation that the Nature MultiPack is fully recyclable. This means that the packaging system has no negative impact on the recycled material (rPET).
