Global consumer brand Slimming contest

In the context of global carbon reduction, international consumer brands have set off a "plastic reduction" war.

The giants have set up flags - Unilever has pledged to reduce plastic use by 350,000 tons by 2025; Nestle has pledged to reduce plastic use by a third by 2025. Kraft Heinz, one of the world's largest food and beverage companies, has pledged to reduce the use of virgin plastic in packaging by 20% by 2030.

Recently, the packaging design ideas of major brands have changed: slim down plastic products and reduce the "plastic content".

However, this road soon reached its limit, and the domestic dairy giant Yili came up with a unique technical solution and won the Golden Apple Award in the field of domestic plastic recycling.

"Micro-foaming" weight loss

Yili, the "first brother in the dairy industry" in China, has innovated the micro-foaming process of yogurt bottles from the perspective of materials, reduced the density of plastics, and achieved 6-17% weight reduction in materials such as labels, plastic cups, plastic bottles, and composite films.

"Only from the Angle of material thinning and weight reduction has almost reached the limit, so the research of micro-foaming technology has been carried out, without changing the thickness of the material, by reducing the density of the material to achieve weight reduction." Yili R & D staff told the new observation of waste plastics.

They combine the processing technology and material characteristics of different packaging materials such as blowing film, blow molding and blister, and combine the characteristics of materials and processes on the basis of the existing foaming agent formula, optimize the nucleating agent and crosslinking agent, develop the corresponding micro-foaming technology, and realize the micro-foaming of packaging materials such as bottle body, bottle cap, heat shrink label and plastic cup.

At present, they have completed the design of micro-foaming packaging for Yitian, Lao yoghurt and Amoxi products, and created the industry's first packaging with micro-foaming technology for all components.

"Connecting the middle and three parts"

At the 28th China Plastic Recycling and Recycling Conference ChinaReplas2023, as a Chinese enterprise actively exploring and promoting full chain carbon reduction, Yili won three awards in one fell swath:

"Golden Apple Award" for Innovative Application of Recycled Plastics

Winning product: Light-blocking PET bottles recycled for shrink labels

Plastic packaging, plastic product design innovation "Golden Apple Award"

Winning product: Application of Micro-foaming weight reduction technology in dairy packaging

Award-winning product: Eco Springs ink-free volcanic bottle