ReZorce® Circular Packaging from Zotefoams wins IOM3’s 2022 Prince Philip Award
Zotefoams plc, a world leader in advanced cellular materials, has won IOM3’s 2022 Prince Philip Award. It was presented to Zotefoams Group CEO David Stirling at a gala dinner in London on 8 December 2022.
The prize recognises ReZorce® Circular Packaging the company’s fully recyclable mono-material barrier packaging range, developed as an alternative to hard-to-recycle multi-materials and offering significant potential to create a circular economy in the 300 billion unit per annum beverage carton market.
Judged by the Polymer Group of the UK’s Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), the theme of the Award is ‘Plastics in the service of man’. It is made to applicants whose achievements are considered by the Council of the Institute to be beneficial to mankind in improving the quality of life, in easing pain and distress, in conserving or extending the availability of natural resources, materials and food.
As ReZorce nears commercial launch, trials are under way with several brand owners. Zotefoams has focused initial application development efforts on beverage cartons, where current composite materials do not meet the requirements of impending legislation on recycled content and recyclability of consumer packaging. Nor can they easily be recycled, with evidence indicating that over 50% of composite beverage cartons are incinerated or sent to landfill each year.
A second development stream for flexible packaging is also advancing at pace, attracting attention from brand owners looking to save costs through reduced polymer usage, while moving to closed loop and circular models for packaging.
Zotefoams – then known as BXL Plastics – previously won the Prince Philip Award in 1981, for its Plastazote® polyethylene foam, widely used in medical applications thanks to its non-toxic properties and extraordinary versatility. These characteristics remain much in demand in healthcare and skin contact applications today, as well as in many other sectors.
Accepting the Award on behalf of the team behind ReZorce, David Stirling said, “Urgent change is required in the way we manage the earth’s resources. No matter what the material, if it cannot be easily recycled, it is part of the linear ‘take-make-waste’ economy.
ReZorce offers a circular alternative in single-use packaging, in stark contrast to composite materials such as those used in current beverage cartons. Furthermore, it has a significantly lower environmental impact and is straightforward to recycle through kerbside collection and standard recycling streams.
“Plastics are frequently maligned but the IOM3’s Prince Philip Award is designed to demonstrate that, used appropriately, they have many benefits.
“I am proud of the team that has developed ReZorce and also that Zotefoams has been recognised for a second time as winner of the Prince Philip Award.”