U.K.-based packaging company Flexi-Hex is debuting its recycled fiber protective sleeve in North America thanks to an agreement announced this month with California-based Orora Packaging Solutions.
Orora is currently the only North American distributor of Flexi-Hex products. The company’s role is to find the best new sustainable packaging technologies, test them and either manufacture or distribute them, said Cory Connors, Orora’s director of sustainable packaging. Five-year-old, B Corp-certified Flexi-Hex offers products that Connors said are unique because they are fiber-based substitutes for commonly used plastic-based protective packaging like foam packing peanuts or air-filled plastic cushions.
“This is important because consumers and companies are looking for sustainable alternatives,” Connors said. “It’s a challenge — it’s not easy to go from something that's been used for sometimes years or decades to a new item that’s been newly developed.”
Other packaging manufacturers have also reported increased demand for more sustainable packaging alternatives and launched partnerships to advance them.
Graphic Packaging International in May said it’s partnering with Chick-fil-A to launch a proprietary insulated, double-walled fiber cup. Also this spring, Amcor began a joint research collaboration with Nfinite Nanotechnology to develop an oxygen barrier that improves performance for compostable or recyclable packaging, which often is paper-based. And Nestlé worked with an external partner to develop paper-based Nespresso coffee pods that are being tested in Europe.
Two lines of Flexi-Hex patented hexagonal honeycomb sleeves are available: one made from 100% recycled paper and a lighter option made from 100% recycled tissue paper. The patented honeycomb sleeve design comes in various sizes and is flexible so it can adapt for use with a variety of products.
“You can you can drop it from 10 to 11 feet in the air, and [the protected product] can survive. So it has really extraordinary structural protection capabilities that you can't even get with a lot of plastics and foams,” said Chris Bradley, chief marketing, design and sustainability officer at Orora.
Orora aims to provide the Flexi-Hex protective sleeves along with complementary sustainable packaging that it already manufactures, such as corrugated boxes, Bradley said.
“We aggregate all those different capabilities together so that a customer can just focus on becoming more sustainable,” he said. “That’s our entire mission: to help companies in the U.S. and North America to convert from the packaging that they're using today to increasingly more sustainable options.”
Flexi-Hex products’ compact design allows them to be stored densely and take up less space compared with alternatives, Bradley said, which lessens their environmental footprint. For example, the amount of Flexi-Hex that is equivalent to an entire row’s worth of bubble wrap at a distribution center could fill half a pallet or less. Stocking the product throughout Orora’s more than 70 “solution center” locations reduces shipping distances, which limits transportation emissions. The products can be reused and then recycled in curbside programs at end of life, they said.
