Smurfit Kappa’s two largest European bag-in-box plants in France and Spain are now using the Vitop Natural, a tap with a translucent body that was introduced two years ago as a sustainable alternative to the carbon black Vitop. 

As the carbon black pigment is not always detected by the optical sorting near-infrared (NIR) scanners used by many recycling facilities, it can be classified as an unwanted component and can also give recycled plastic an unattractive grey colour. 

Didier Pontcharraud, CEO of Vitop, commented: “We aim to design our packaging in such a way that it is easy to collect, sort and recycle, and it is important for us to promote this on a larger scale. Smurfit Kappa takes on board the recommendations of the plastic packaging resource management authorities that we work with.” 

“Switching all of our bags from carbon black Vitop to Vitop Natural improves our internal sustainability targets. By limiting the number of batch orders we considerably optimized our production process which has resulted in a lower waste rate,” added Dominique Gessat, General Manager of Smurfit Kappa Bag-in-Box France. 

Vitop Natural, which can also be produced from bio-based materials on request, has been very well received since it was launched. It is also available in a compact version with reduced plastic weight.