Südpack achieves ISCC Plus certification

Südpack has established an important basis for the further development of its processes and products that will continue to drive the transformation from a linear to a circular economy.

ISCC EU is one of the leading standards for sustainable biofuels, which has now expanded as a globally recognized management system for mass balance certification to other critical areas of the circular economy. The aim is to ensure the traceability of raw materials along the entire value chain in the food, animal feed and chemical sectors. ISCC Plus is significantly more stringent than ISO certification because every production site must be specifically certified.

At Südpack, one of the uses for this certification is to provide evidence of the use of chemically recycled material. Because besides its compounding and regranulation, the film producer also increasingly uses chemical recycling as a supplementary market alternative as part of its sustainability offensive. This ambitious strategy aims to further increase the proportion of recycled material in film production and convert hitherto non-recyclable industrial plastic waste into valuable resources.

By the end of November 2021, all its German sites had been successfully certified, starting with the SÜDPACK Verpackungen sites in Ochsenhausen and Erolzheim and continuing with Ecoform Multifol in Erlenmoos and Schwendi, which has been certified as both a waste collection point and a production facility. The regranulate produced there, which is reused in extrusion, can therefore be designated as ISCC PLUS-certified material – just like any mechanical and chemical recyclates that Südpack purchases from an ISCC Plus-certified business.

‘ISCC Plus certification is extremely laborious and expensive but is an important step in terms of preserving resources and the environment and therefore sustainability as a whole,’ said Erik Bouts, CEO of Südpack. ‘As a manufacturer of products that were previously predominantly based on fossil-based raw materials, Südpack feels particularly obliged to both support and intensively press ahead with this development.’