With sustainability at the core of its business, processing and packaging solutions company Tetra Pak says it is implementing a number of technological innovations and solutions that engender the lowest carbon footprint and highest efficiency.

Tetra Pak Southern African MD Stefan Fageräng, speaking at a roundtable this month, indicated that the majority of food operations in the country were run to the point of breakdown, which meant that Tetra Pak engineers were only called in for services when something broke down.

This is inefficient and leads to production, time and cost losses as a result of downtime, as well as a higher level of waste.

Therefore, the company is advocating for advanced technology to be implemented.

Fageräng indicated that, while the food industry was a little late to the Industry 4.0 revolution, food legislation required changes to be made, because the industry was high risk and required careful consideration.

“I believe that, over the next few years, the technology that is available to us now can be applied to the industry to help us move forward,” he said.

Tetra Pak was connecting all equipment at clients’ food operations to a 24/7 centre, where it could monitor these and inform customers pre-emptively when a breakdown would occur, thereby ensuring smoother operations in the country.

With technological advances of equipment used in the industry came more-complicated systems and a requirement for a high level of expertise to understand these and attend to problems, noted Fageräng.

As experts are scattered globally, it is inefficient to fly them in to a food operation each time a machine needs maintenance or a problem arises – considering all the challenges, costs and environmental repercussions of travelling, obtaining visas and travel time, besides others.

Therefore, to circumvent this situation, Tetra Pak has partnered with Microsoft at global level to use virtual reality headsets – HoloLens headsets. With these, the engineer on site can contact any expert globally, 24/7, and this person will, in principle, be ‘on site’ with the engineer.

The engineer communicates with the expert, who can share his or her view through the ‘glasses’ and make suggestions through speech, text, drawing, or document sharing using augmented reality.

In this way, travel costs are reduced, downtime is reduced, operational costs are reduced, and customer satisfaction is induced.

Moreover, this technology enables upskilling of engineers, as they gain first-hand experience by solving the problem with guided assistance from an expert.

Tetra Pak employees worldwide all shared English as a common business language; therefore, there was no language barrier when contacting a global expert, Fageräng indicated.

Currently, this technology is in the first phase, which entails rolling it out to Tetra Pak engineers globally for implementation internally. There are ten headsets in the country currently.

Once the engineers have used and tested these, Tetra Pak will begin Phase 2 of the process of rolling it out to its customers, who can then use it to contact Tetra Pak’s engineers when necessary.

Each HoloLens costs $10 000. Once it is ready for customer roll-out, it will be offered as part of the company’s service offering packaging, according Fageräng.

“This is a game changer in the food industry,” enthused Fageräng.

Sustainability Push

Fageräng highlighted that Tetra Pak had been pursuing sustainability for many years, and the fact that it was becoming more prominent worldwide was welcomed.

In terms of sustainable packaging, Tetra Pak, in partnership with Woodlands Dairy, one of the largest manufacturers of ultraheat-treatment milk in South Africa, launched the first Tetra Brik Aseptic 1 000 mℓ Slim HeliCap23 biobased package, made with in excess of 80% renewable materials.

Fageräng explained that the cap of the package is made from the waste from processing sugar cane into sugar and wood into paperboard base material. While there is aluminium inside to protect the product, Tetra Pak aims to replace this with plastic to enhance the sustainability of the package.

The package is also 100% recyclable.

It also contains a QR code that provides a story of its entire life cycle – of the package, the on-farm production, and the retailer.

In its commitment to a circular economy, Tetra Pak believes in producing packages from biobased materials.

The package is designed to be recyclable. Tetra Pak works with recyclers to recycle low-density polyethylene and aluminium recovered from its milk and juice liquid cartons to make pallets. This offers a closed-loop, environmentally sustainable solution for packaging waste.

Fageräng noted that a challenge in South Africa pertained to collecting these materials for recycling. The company has partnered with two paper mills that have equipment and the capacity for its packages to be recycled. It is working on executing a deal with recycling companies to encourage its packages to be returned.

Fageräng noted that more money should be paid for the used packs to encourage the interest of informal recyclable material collectors.

Tetra Pak is also investing €100-million a year for the next five years, making alternatives to on-pack plastic straws. The company is exploring several options, such as paper straws, tethered caps, and other drink systems. New closures are a direct result of the focus on marine litter.

Tetra Pak customers have started field-testing paper straws for beverage products in Europe. Tetra Pak is the first carton packaging company to provide such straws for beverage cartons in the region.

The company will also publish and share its innovations on paper straw developments to support industrial collaboration on the alternatives to single-use plastic straws for beverage cartons.

Made from Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper and recyclable with the rest of the package, the new paper straw will be available initially for two small-size carton packages commonly used for dairy and beverage products for children: Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Base and Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Base Crystal.

While this is being implemented in South Africa, Tetra Pak has launched an innovative to encourage the recycling of the straws. On top of the package of some of its juice boxes, around the hole for the plastic straw, text encourages users to push the straw into the carton once they have finished the beverage. This will allow Tetra Pak to recover the straw with the package, and to recycle both.