Small changes, big effects: COSSMA

A luxurious new perfume, radiant makeup or the high-quality body cream – they all require packaging. Not only to keep them safe on their way to the store or the customer’s home, but also to sell the brand and the product’s USP. But not all packages are created equal. And small changes can have a big impact on the packaging’s sustainability. Which is why the producer of premium fresh fibre paperboards Metsä Board has been working for years to find a suitable alternative for the rigid box solutions currently used.

Providing the same experience by remodeling a box that was strong and rigid but lighter and with a smaller environmental impact. That was the main idea behind the process of the research in the company’s Excellence Centre in Äänekoski. The result was launched just last year: A new gift box that uses micro-flute to achieve strength features close to those of rigid boxes while, at the same time, using less material and providing a lower carbon footprint. The new packaging consists of a separate base and lid, which are both made of micro-flute, which has a significantly smaller and lower flute size than traditional corrugated boards. As surface liner, customers can choose to use uncoated white kraftliner or coated white kraftliner. Of these, the latter gives the package the best printing properties. The material can be customised very easily to create unique packaging solutions, with cosmetics being probably the number one application area.

A glimpse into the future of packaging

For this kind of research, high-tech simulation tools – such as those Metsä’s Excellence Centre provides – offer a great advantage and help to find the right solutions in shorter time. They offer the possibility of exploring various sustainable alternatives and therefore offer intriguing glimpses into the future of packaging. It allows the company to help customers compare packaging materials and designs, provide third-party verified calculations on emissions caused by the packaging and find solutions which enable smaller environmental impacts – which also helps the customers to reach their carbon reduction targets. Even though the company only has launched the first commercial pilots for the new gift box in autumn of 2023, they already got a lot of attention about it before that. This proofs that this is clearly the right packaging solution right now in the eyes of many brands.

With half the weight and half the carbon the new boxes still offer the same luxurious unboxing feeling.

Serving the customer’s desire for more sustainability

With the sustainability demand of consumers growing, many brands are looking for ways to package their cosmetics products in more sustainable ways. The new microflute packaging offers just that: When Metsä Board’s Sustainability Services team compared the new micro-flute solution to recycled fibre-based rigid box solutions, they found that the new concept uses significantly less material and could be up to 50% lighter. It’s cradle-to-gate carbon footprint was also found to be 59% lower than that of traditional solutions.1 This analysis considers value chain stages from raw materials extraction until the paperboard product leaves the mill. Another advantage is that the material was developed to be production-efficient from start to finish and suitable for mass production on current production lines – with no major retooling required. And to top it all off, the new gift box requires no harmful adhesives or other plastic laminates, making the recycling much more efficient. A minor change – in this case a change in material – can therefore lead to a big impact on the sustainability aspect of a brand’s packaging, while keeping the product safe and making it all the more desirable to consumers.

References:
1 Metsä Board follows process category rules for processed paper and paperboard which are based on ISO 14040/14044 life cycle assessment standards when assessing environmental impacts of its paperboards. For comparative assertions external datasets from Sphera have been utilised. These datasets represent typical products on the EU markets. Comparison excludes paperboard converting processes. Climate Change methodology used in the assessment was EF3.0 Climate Change – Total.