TokyoPack is the world´s leading comprehensive packaging exhibition, showcasing the latest advancements in Japanese packaging technology and science. The exhibition covers all aspects of packaging, from materials and machinery to design and sustainability. Plastics are still dominating, but there is growing demand for fiber-based materials in packaging.
This year´s event took place at Tokyo Big Sight with over 2300 exhibitors and over 70 000 visitors. Participants come from diverse range of packaging, including packaging material suppliers and machinery manufacturers and printing and converting equipment suppliers. Also packaging design and consulting firms, logistics and supply chain solution providers were present in the event. There were several key themes in this year´s exhibition. Sustainability was as one of the key themes followed by innovation, consumer trends, supply chain optimization and food safety&hygiene.
Ecohelix participated to the event to explore the market and to find new customers and partners. We had really busy days at our booth, there were several hundred of visitors and we gained a lot of interest towards our wood-based solutions. Specific interest was towards our wood-based heat seal coating solution, which provides several benefits to the packaging solution with the opportunity to replace the plastics, reduce the CO2 emissions, keep the high performance and enable circularity of the packaging products.
It was remarkable, how plastics still dominate the packaging market in Japan and in Asia. This is easy to see just by going to the city and visiting the shops. Majority of the goods are packaged to plastics and inside a plastic cover, individual items are packaged into individual plastic bags, which provides a huge challenge. In Asia market as a whole, there is less regulation in place to steer away from plastic packaging and single use plastics. There is a big difference to Europe in the market from that perspective. In certain markets however, the regulation is also supporting the actions towards more sustainable solutions. For example in Japan, the government implemented Plastic Resource Circulation Strategy in 2019 with the basic principles of which are 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The strategy includes milestones and targets to reduce single-use plastics, enhance the recyclability, the reuse of plastic materials and increase of the biomass in the material production.
Petri Oinonen, CEO and Founder of Ecohelix, highlighted several key trends observed at TokyoPack. “A significant focus was placed on pure plastic packaging, with some companies incorporating composite materials. Larger companies emphasized the importance of traceability and recyclability of plastic materials.
On the fiber-based side, a wide range of companies presented solutions involving dry molding and wet molding techniques. Wood-based solutions were less prominent, they garnered significant interest, particularly due to the limitations of current recycling methods and the increasing demand for sustainable packaging. This was shown at Ecohelix booth with lot´s of interest towards our wood-based polymers and their possibilities in different packaging products and applications”.
Ecohelix’s presentation at Swedish Packaging Innovation Seminar at TokyoPack showcased a future-oriented approach to packaging. Petri emphasized the need for innovative solutions beyond traditional recycling, as current recycling rates for plastics remain low. Fiber-based packaging offers a promising avenue for higher recycling rates. However, multilayer sandwich structures pose challenges in recycling. Ecohelix’s solution, which enables repulpability and fully wood-based packaging, addresses this issue and has generated considerable interest.
Ecohelix’s next steps include acquiring new customers and partners, building market presence, expanding production capacity to 500 tons to bring first products to the market. We work hard to establish strong customer base to ultimately scale up our production to 10,000 tons by 2027, producing a range of sustainable, low emissioning and high performing wood-based polymers to be used in packaging products, dispersing agent, water-based adhesives and paper chemicals.