Pioneering packaging films with sustainable techniques

February 26, 2020 4:06 pm

“BOPP is a very friendly material as you can recycle it many times at very low temperatures, and it consumes very less power while being manufactured.”

Pankaj Poddar, CEO, Cosmo Films, discusses the benefits of biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) packaging films and how synthetic paper can help safeguard the environment while improving the shelf life of paper.

Kindly walk us through your journey of Cosmo Films.
Established in 1981, Cosmo Films set up their first plant in Aurangabad and introduced the country to BOPP packaging films. Starting with a very small capacity of mere 800 tonnes per annum, from 1981 to 2001, we set up 4 BOPP lines and started engineering films for a plethora of applications which include but are not limited to biscuits, bakery, cigarette wraps, etc. In 2002, we made our first acquisition of Gujarat Propack Limited, which was then a major player in BOPP Films. The acquisition made us market leaders with more than 50 percent market share in BOPP film manufacturing.

In 2004, we ventured into engineering thermal lamination films, and actually made a film on which we took a global patent, which helped the thermal lamination industry eliminate the primer on the film. We then decided to get into the thermal lamination vertical, and within five years, we became the second largest player. Post acquisition of GBC Commercial’s Print Finish Business, we became the largest player of thermal lamination films globally. In 2011 or 2012, we started to get into coatings, which is another area of value for BOPP films. This venture helped us in increasing our capacity as well. Today, we have 200 thousand tonnes of BOPP capacity. We are the largest player in thermal lamination films and we are also one of the leaders in BOPP coated films. Recently, we also got into engineering synthetic papers and it has proven to be highly successful in terms of our company’s growth. So now, we have four product verticals, namely packaging films, lamination films, labelling films, and industrial films. We have three plants in India and one plant in Korea, with a global footprint in over 180 countries.

How do you define sustainability in the packaging industry? How far is the industry adhering to the guidelines to maintain a sustainable environment?
There is a lot of noise today about plastics and their recyclability. The fact is that we have to understand that plastic itself helps minimise carbon footprint in a very big way as compared to any of its other substitutes. Moreover, BOPP is a very friendly material as you can recycle it many times at very low temperatures, and it consumes very less power while being manufactured. While talking to several recyclers, we found that the biggest challenge is multi-layer plastic packaging, which though is recyclable, holds very little monetary value post recycling. Brands have been using multi-layers to get benefits like shelf life, barrier properties, high seal strength, etc. But now we are helping brands create easily recyclable PP based structures with all the properties and features intact.

This structure, once recycled, holds a much better commercial value (as high as ₹50/60 per kg). The challenge we faced while making PP based structures was the shrinkage of BOPP in the print layer due to higher temperatures used for sealing. To overcome this challenge, we came out with a BOPP based heat-resistant film, which could not only sustain high temperatures, but were also completely recyclable with better value realisations.

On the manufacturing side, we follow a multi-pronged strategy to enable growth that is sustainable and inclusive. This includes following green manufacturing and best energy management practices and having well-defined environment health and safety systems in place

What is the technology to invest in the future? What is your take on BOPP and do you see it being one?
BOPP, as I said earlier, is one of the most easily recyclable materials; so from a sustainability perspective, it is here to stay. We have developed a host of products keeping sustainability in mind. One is synthetic paper, where we are able to replace pulp based paper which involves cutting down of trees, while improving the shelf life for the application in question. The second product, which is best suited for food packaging, are mono-material structures, i.e., structures which are either poly propylene based or a mix of PP and PE and can be easily recycled back to their raw form, i.e., make granules out of it and reuse it again in the process. So we say no to using nylon, polyester and a lot of other materials.

Around PP, we are working on multiple areas, i.e., continuously improving the sealing strength, continuously giving better barrier properties to the films, and increasing the products’ heat resistance.

Your focus has been on expansion of synthetic paper product. How well does it fit in your current product profile?
Synthetic paper has proven to be very fruitful and contributed heavily to our growth curve. We have multiple products within the synthetic paper family to meet different needs of the consumer. We have a good base of products, or rather I would say we have the strongest base of synthetic paper products which are doing really well for us and are in high demand.

Do you think you can successfully convince people to replace paper with synthetic paper?
See, synthetic paper is costlier than paper, so definitely for very basic aspects I do not think it would be able to replace conventional paper as such, but applications which require durability and longevity are the service areas for us to cater. I can give you a very simple example. If you go to an adventure park and you are given a hand tag, you are required to keep the hand tag intact all through your visit. Hence, it needs to be made from a very strong paper. This is one good application for synthetic paper. Similarly, you have medical records where you don’t want the pages to become yellow over time; there are plant tags which should be able to handle extreme weathers and there are meat tags. There are so many different applications. You can use it for land documentation, university certificates, and restaurant menu cards. So wherever you want something which can have a better life than normal paper, I think those are applications where people are ready to pay that little extra price. Let’s say that with the environmental concerns becoming an important topic, the usage would only go up with time.

Which sustainable products have you added in your profile, especially in the packaging industry?
In the packaging industry, BOPP based films are very sustainable and can be recycled easily. And just to make sure that the brand owners are able to have mono-material structures, we have come out with a heat-resistant film. We also came out with a film which had both barrier properties and heat resistance. Apart from these, we also came out with CPP films with excellent sealing properties. We are continuously working on this area, and from the future perspective, we are looking to venture into making home compostable films. They would obviously be a little more expensive than our conventional films, but we are also looking at avenues so as to reduce their cost. When successful, we would be pioneers in manufacturing low-cost home compostable films in India.

Since quality is a stringent requirement today especially in the packaging industry, what makes you sustain amidst the competitors?
We have one of the best quality standards and recently, one of our plants in Aurangabad bagged the second position in the CII National Excellence Award 2019 for 5S, while the other plants also received GOLD ratings in the manufacturing category. Our hygiene, housekeeping and 5S standards are far superior to not just within our industry, but lot of other industries as well. The second thing is that our quality standards are also very high. We recently measured Six Sigma levels for our quality and we are at 5.2, which is a very high standard from the quality perspective. In fact, in the near future, we are looking to get some very coveted awards on the quality side as well. Our quality lab itself is full of equipment where we can test virtually any type of property that we want to test, and we have a strong quality team of almost 80 people.

What are your R&D and expansion plans for the company?
Cosmo of late has been investing a great deal in all its pillars namely people, processes, and equipment. On the people’s side, we have a very strong and significantly experienced team; most of them are doctors and postdoctorates. We want to increase our strength by almost 30 people in the next 2-3 years.

Cosmo has recently invested $1 million in its new state-of-the-art R&D facility at Waluj, Aurangabad. This new R&D facility is equipped with the latest and the most sophisticated instruments for analysis and application of products. Our R&D facility also consists of an application and printing lab for in-house testing and evaluation of new products before sampling. We have also invested in a pilot film manufacturing line from the research perspective and in a pilot master batch line so that we can learn more about it.