Amcor has launched AmLite Ultra Recyclable, the first packaging product made from the company’s revolutionary, more sustainable high-barrier polyolefin film that came out last year. The new high-barrier laminate can package a range of food, home and personal care, and pharmaceutical products, and be recycled in existing polyolefin recycling streams.

AmLite Ultra Recyclable is the latest addition to Amcor’s AmLite product line, which was created in 2015 to provide metal-free barrier packaging that significantly reduced the packaging’s carbon footprint.

"Our recyclable laminate delivers high-barrier protection, can be used on our customers’ filling machines, and can be recycled where polyolefin collection and recycling streams exist," said Luca Zerbini, vice president of marketing, innovation and sustainability at Amcor.

AmLite can be used for a variety of formats, such as pillow pouches, stand-up and spouted pouches; bags; lidding for trays and containers; stick packs and more.

The new pack will allow Amcor’s customers to move to recyclable flexible packaging across a variety of consumer-product segments like coffee, snacks, dry pet food, baby nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and home and personal care. This will be a major shift for brands, as previously, high-barrier flexible packaging was difficult to recycle. To overcome this, Amcor’s R&D team innovated to replace the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) layer of the original AmLite packaging with its breakthrough high-barrier OPP film. To validate recyclability in real conditions, the package is certified by cyclos-HTP Institute, an independent testing lab.

AmLite achieves a reduced carbon footprint by using an ultra-thin, transparent barrier coating to replace aluminum and metallized barriers. That change, combined with recyclability, can reduce a pack’s carbon footprint by up to 64%1.

AmLite Ultra Recyclable and AmLite Standard Recyclable are the first laminates in the AmLite product range to offer recyclability, adding two products to Amcor’s portfolio. AmLite Standard Recyclable, which provides medium- to high-barrier protection for ambient applications, is already on supermarket shelves thanks to some early adopter brands. AmLite Ultra Recyclable is now available for broader customer trials.

Amcor’s R&D experts are continuing work with new polyolefin films to develop future solutions for even more demanding applications, such as recyclable packaging for retort processing.

¹ *Comparison based on foil laminate PET12 / Alu8/ PE75 to OPP20 AmLite / PE 70 100% Recycling - Cradle to grave comparison