Pasta Purveyor Replaces Fossil-based with Plant-based Rollstock
The new PBR material is RIC1 approved so it is identified as PET in typical sorting processes; it can be recycled along with the PET without issue.
Mar 1st, 2021
From humble beginnings as a vendor in Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market more than 30 years ago, Cucina Fresca Gourmet Foods is now a leading U.S. producer of natural, prepared pastas, and sauces. Owned and operated by executive chef Brad Glaberson since 2005, the brand is inspired by fresh, high-quality ingredients like vine-ripened tomatoes, premium cheeses, and garden-picked basil. The Cucina Fresca line of prepared foods has grown to more than 130 products that are available in more than 1,500 grocery stores, specialty shops and foodservice channels nationwide.
Sealed Air PET trays of fresh pasta switch to a corn starch-based biopolymer barrier layer that replaces nearly 25% of the traditional plastic.
The anti-plastics movement has motivated some brands to make radical changes from polymer-based packaging to alternatives such as paper or aluminum.
But not all. Cucina Fresca Gourmet Foods, a producer and packager of natural, prepared pastas and sauces, found a middle ground where it could retain all the benefits of clear plastic trays while responding to customers’ desire for improved packaging sustainability.
The brand switched to Sealed Air’s Cryovac Plant-Based Rollstock (PBR) rollstock for thermoformed trays in the fourth quarter of 2020. The forming web is a three-layer construction of a high-barrier renewable Plantic bioplastic layer made from cornstarch, PET, and a thin polyethylene-based sealant layer, according to Monty Kayes, Sealed Air s director of new business development. Agricultural crops