UN-Rated Tight-Head Container Made With 100% PCR

With a booth at PACK EXPO Las Vegas highlighting a variety of more sustainable packaging, a key new development on display from Mauser Packaging Solutions was its UN-rated tight-head container made with 100% post-consumer resin (PCR). This is the first of its kind, according to Chris Bradshaw, explaining the difficulty of making such a container durable and reliable.

Mauser’s closed-loop system is key, Bradshaw says, to better control the consistency of materials being recycled. “We are able to reuse our own resin and create a fortified package,” he says, explaining the different melt levels in various resins. “This is probably a 4 or 6 melt. You might have other resins that are going to be a 30 melt, and that’s going to be a lot more degraded; you’re going to have a bit more impurities with that resin, so it’s not going to allow you to get the stack strength that you need out of it.”

The new tight-head container is made with recycled HDPE produced at Mauser’s own industrial packaging facilities. The closed loop also enables Mauser to get a solid color that’s relatively consistent throughout. “That’s very rare when you’re dealing with post-consumer anything or PIR, post-industrial resin,” Bradshaw says.

Available in 19- and 20-L capacities, the tight-head containers have a range of uses, from flavored syrups for the beverage industry to fertilizers for cannabis growers. The container is UN-rated 3H1W/Y1.8/100. It satisfies California Prop. 65 requirements for rigid plastic packaging containers (RPPCs) and meets requirements for Prop. 65 heavy metal PPM.

The recycled HDPE gives the container about a 60% smaller carbon footprint vs. tight-head containers made with virgin HDPE.