Major food manufacturers, including Mondelēz International, PepsiCo, and Pladis, have partnered with industry organisations to launch a Belgium-wide trial to assess digital watermarking technology for flexible food packaging.
Facilitated by the AIM and the European Brands Association under the ‘HolyGrail 2030’ initiative, the project evaluates whether invisible codes printed on wrappers and films can help automated sorting facilities accurately identify packaging materials and determine whether they were previously used for food.
The project represents Europe’s first national-scale trial involving post-consumer flexible packaging collected through a household recycling system.
Under the trial process, invisible Digimarc watermarks are applied across packaging surfaces during the printing stage.
Flexible packaging collected via Belgium’s Fost Plus household network is subsequently sent to Hündgen Entsorgungs’ sorting facility in Germany, where high-resolution Pellenc ST cameras read the printed watermarks to separate food-contact films from non-food materials.
The trial aims to generate technical data to support food-grade mechanical recycling pathways ahead of upcoming EU packaging and packaging waste regulations, which mandate a 10 per cent minimum recycled plastic content for select food-contact packaging starting in 2030.
Participating stakeholders, including packaging converter Constantia Flexibles and value-chain initiative Ceflex, said that real-world sorting trials are essential to establishing the practical infrastructure required for scalable, circular flexible packaging systems.
“In order to be ready for the ambitious recycled content targets in the upcoming EU packaging and packaging waste regulation, this market demonstration aims to provide the real-life technical learning that the value chain needs in order to increase the availability, compatibility and affordability of recycled plastic coming from new technologies,” said Richard Akkermans at Mondelēz International.
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