Gutfried Breaks New Ground in Packaging

For the Gutfried brand, the Zur Mühlen Group, together with BASF, Sabic and Südpack, is using innovative recycling technologies to spice up the sustainability image of plastic packaging. Chemical recycling is intended to save fossil raw materials.

Sustainability, also in the packaging: This is what the new Gutfried brand organic chicken meat sausage is intended to express. For this reason, the packaging consists mainly of recycled plastic: around two thirds of the raw materials used for the packaging come from plastic waste. Chemical recycling is used for processing. According to cooperation partner BASF, the used plastics are converted into pyrolysis oil in a high-temperature process. Like fossil raw materials, pyrolysis oil is then used at the beginning of the chemical production chain, saving conventional crude oil.

Recyclable without loss of quality

“The innovative packaging based on recycled raw materials is a perfect match for our new Gutfried organic chicken meat sausage,” emphasizes Maximilian Tönnies, Managing Director of the Zur Mühlen Group. “Our customers are increasingly attaching importance to sustainability. This naturally applies to the production of our products, but also to aspects such as packaging”. The lower film and upper film of the packaging each consist of several layers of different polymers, and are manufactured by the film producer Südpack.

BASF supplies the necessary polyamide, the chemical company Sabic the polyethylene. Both components are based on raw materials that were recovered from mixed plastic waste by means of chemical recycling. These have not been recycled up to now, as the cooperation partners emphasize. “Plastic products made from chemically recycled material can be recycled again after use without any loss of quality,” emphasizes Christoph Gahn, responsible for BASF’s polyamide business in Europe.