Uflex bags sustainability awards

Ashok Chaturvedi, chairman and managing director of Uflex, said, “This has been a great year for Uflex with our innovation Waterless Internet Flower Packaging walking away with top honours at the Sustainability Award and another win just a month back at the Dow Packaging Awards. The awards are a reaffirmation of our efforts in optimizing sustainability footprint and business performance standards to deliver the highest levels of quality.”

It also emerged as a frontrunner in the ‘Resource Efficiency’ category that honours innovations in packaging that do more with less, such as down-gauging material or reducing the carbon footprint without increasing the environmental impact of the packaged products. 

Uflex’s Waterless Internet Flower Packaging is based on Active Modified Atmospheric Packaging Technology (AMAP).

N Siva Shankaran, vice president, Flexfresh at Uflex, said, “In addition to multiplying the shelf-life and energy consumption in the supply chain for flowers, Uflex is applying Flexfresh to a wide range of fruits and vegetables. Flexfresh brings in significant competitive edge to Supermarkets around the world for providing sustainable solutions to their fresh produce packaging.”

Uflex has engineered Flexfresh, a special proprietary patented polymeric film for offering packaging solution for fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. This special proprietary polymeric substrate is the first biodegradable (by composting) film that maintains the hydration of flowers during transpiration (evaporation causing loss of moisture during respiration) thus creating a closed-loop system. 

Flowers are put to slow respiration mode by reducing the oxygen availability preventing excess oxidation and dehydration. The film keeps the flowers breathing in hydrated oxygen and release excess humidity keeping them touch dry. The flowers thus can go without water for 20 days as the humidity is fed back into the flower when it continues to breathe in the modified atmosphere and further seven days in the vase.

“Uflex is currently testing its new improved Flexfresh with high clarity which could replace conventional bags/pouches in supermarket shelves. This change would facilitate Supermarkets to achieve their sustainable goals in the short term,” added Siva Shankaran.

 Tim Sykes, Packaging Europe’s head of content, said, “The ever-growing engagement in the Sustainability Awards reflects the increased urgency with which consumers and regulators have demanded solutions to environmental problems associated with packaging in the past few years. Not only that, but it also reflects the serious thought and investment the whole packaging value chain has been putting into sustainability. "

The Waterless Internet Flower Packaging prevailed over a hundred innovative submissions, which were graded by a seventeen independent and experts in the judging panel representing the breadth of the European packaging value chain.

In selecting it as the overall winner of this year's competition, our expert, the independent judging panel has endorsed Uflex’s Waterless Internet Flower Packaging as a clear case of sustainable innovation which creates significant energy reductions in the supply chain,” added Sykes.