ReZorce® Circular Packaging WINS prestigious British Plastic Federation’s Horners Bottlemakers Award 2021
ReZorce® Circular Packaging from Zotefoams plc has been recognised by the British Plastics Federation and Worshipful Company Of Horners, with the judges awarding the coveted Horners Bottlemakers Award 2021 for innovation in plastics design and manufacture or in the processing of polymers.
The Award recognises Zotefoams’ achievement in deploying this platform technology as an alternative to current, hard-to-recycle materials used to produce beverage cartons, some 300 billion of which are used globally each year.
ReZorce Circular Packaging is a range of mono-material barrier packaging that meets or exceeds food industry standards. Zotefoams is currently nearing commercial launch of ReZorce beverage cartons produced from HDPE ReZorce sheet: thanks to the layered structure of the material, recycled polymer (currently up to 70%) can be incorporated within the core layers. ReZorce is fully recyclable via post-consumer household waste collection, offering a circular solution – in contrast to current composite materials that can only be downcycled but which are more often incinerated or sent to landfill due to the cost and complexity of recovery processes.
“The Judges felt ReZorce® Circular Packaging to be a shining example of how technical developments in plastics can help us all move towards the circular economy,” said Mike Birrell, Chairman, Horners Awards Committee.
The Horners Bottlemakers Award is believed to be the longest established Design Award for Polymers in the world. The winner must be a plastic package, hollow container, bottle, or made by any process including extrusion blow, injection blow, injection stretch blow, injection moulding, rotational moulding or vacuum forming, that has significant UK content in Design, Materials or Manufacture, plus a proven record of commercial success.
Neil Court-Johnston, VP Strategy EMEA at Zotefoams, said, “We are delighted to accept the prestigious Horners Bottlemakers Award and gratified that the potential of ReZorce as a forward-thinking innovation is being recognised before it even reaches supermarket shelves.
“ReZorce is a simple solution – for brand owners and manufacturers, for retailers, for consumers and for the recycling sector – to the seemingly intractable challenge of achieving circularity for beverage cartons. Expressions of interest so far suggest this is something the market has been waiting for and we look forward to completing the first production runs on customers’ lines early next year.”
Zotefoams’ technology was celebrated at a ceremony on 28 September as part of Interplas 2021 at Birmingham’s NEC.
For more information about ReZorce Circular Packaging please visit www.rezorce.info.