High liner foods, headquartered in danvers, ma, is one of north america&rsquos largest processors and marketers of superiorquality seafood products for both retail and foodservice venues. The company markets its frozen seafood to retailers under the sea cuisine and fisher boy brands, and is also a major supplier of privatelabel seafood. Its foodservice division is one of the leading broadline suppliers of seafood to the foodservice marketplace.
According to high liner marketing services manager gwendolyn s. Goguelet, the company places a high value on sustainability in the sourcing of its primary products. &ldquohigh liner foods is committed to protecting the environment through responsible business practices, innovative solutions, and a promise to produce, procure, and distribute seafood that is harvested or farmraised in a sustainable manner,&rdquo she says. The company&rsquos goal, she adds, is to ensure its products are 100 sustainable by yearend 2013. That commitment extends to the packaging in which its products are distributed, as well. For some time, high liner has worked toward optimizing its packaging through efforts such as reducing the size of its shipping cases, lightweighting its packaging materials, and opting for full truckloads versus limited truckloads to maximize trailer space and reduce fuel costs. In spring 2010, high liner cast about for a solution that could further reduce its packaging footprint and &ldquoaffect the broadest possible spectrum of paperboard&rdquo&mdashthe company&rsquos largest packaging material group&mdashsays goguelet.
It was an article in a trade magazine, she explains, that led high liner to investigate a mineralized coating technology from smart planet technologies. High liner&rsquos eventual decision to switch to earthcoating&trade for its retail packs, representing a staggering 26 million cartonsyear, was one that reverberated up and down the packaging supply chain for its frozen seafood products. Technology goes against the tide high liner foods packages over 300 skus of frozen seafood in paperboard cartons, for its sea cuisine, fisher boy, and privatelabel retail brands. The company uses 10 different carton sizes, in 16 and 18pt sbs board, converted by cenveo labels and packaging. The cartons use a recyclable, aqueous gloss, polymerbased coating on the outside, and until recently, a coating made of 100 lowdensity polyethylene on the inside.
Earthcoating, from smart planet technologies, is a relatively new technology that allows up to 60 of the ldpe in a barrier coating to be replaced with calcium carbonate cao3. &ldquothis is a very, very highperformance barrier coating that can be applied to just about any type of paper or folding carton material, using essentially all of the same equipment,&rdquo explains smart planet cto chris tilton. The clear coating is said to provide up to a 60 greater moisture vapor transmission rate mvtr than 100 ldpe and offers comparable heatseal performance
The mineralized coating has also been approved by the food & drug administration for direct foodcontact applications. While high liner was intrigued by the potential of using earthcoating on its cartons, its main concern was freezer performance. &ldquothe production, shipping, and freezethaw cycles in the frozen industry are always a primary concern for integrity of the product on shelf,&rdquo says goguelet. &ldquowe needed to ensure
That neither the function nor the aesthetic appearance of the product would be negatively affected.&rdquo hooking suppliers on the new technology successful use of the new coating also depended upon the ability of high liner&rsquos converter, cenveo, to print and cut the paperboard to the same quality standards as high liner&rsquos existing packaging, as well as the ability and willingness of the paperboard supplier&mdashclearwater paper corp.&mdashto work with the new coating material on its existing equipment. &ldquoinitially cenveo was cautiously interested,&rdquo says goguelet. &ldquohowever, they were more than willing to pursue the sustainability objective, and they worked closely with us on every step to achieve this goal.&rdquo dusty mcguire, marketing and sales development for cenveo, concurs with goguelet&rsquos assessment &ldquoinitially there were concerns regarding the material&rsquos ability to equally perform in comparison to the customer&rsquos typical substrate. We also had concerns regarding the substrate&rsquos ability to withstand extremely cold temperatures. We quickly learned this oneofakind substrate was up to the test, surpassing our expectations.&rdquo as for clearwater paper, goguelet says they were &ldquoconcerned about the impact on their equipment performance,
As the project required some testing and adjusting in their plant.&rdquo richard dreshfield, director of marketing and customer service for clearwater paper, agrees &ldquowithany new material, there is always a concern about how well it is going to run through existing equipment&mdashwhether equipment modifications will be required, those types of things.&rdquo he adds however that clearwater paper was initially very interested in experimenting with the new coating material. &ldquowe know that there is a lot of work and innovation going on in the market around alternatives to straight ldpe,&rdquo he says, &ldquoand we want to stay abreast of those.&rdquo the supplychain collaboration unfolded as follows high liner contacted cenveo
About the move to the new coating, and the fish processor and converter then worked closely with smart planet to determine the coat weights and packaging material. Cenveo communicated with clearwater paper, which also received technical assistance from smart planet in running the new coating through its existing processing equipment. The project took eight months of trials and experimentation before the new cartons were ready for a full production run. Tackling trial runs during trials of the new carton coating, high liner began by asking cenveo to send board samples&mdashthe products use clearwater paper&rsquos candesce c1s paperboard&mdashfor an assessment of earthcoating&rsquos performance and the improvement in sustainability ratings, goguelet explains.
Cenveo then ran an inplant test to evaluate the cutting and printing output. Cenveo prints the board at its jacksonville, fl, plant on a kba sheetfed offset press in six to eight colors. When it was determined that not only did cartons coated with earthcoating on the inside surface handle as well as 100 ldpecoated materials, but also that the cartons &ldquoresulted in a more seamless production entirely,&rdquo according to mcguire, cenveo approached clearwater paper about producing test quantities of the board. For the trials, clearwater paper evaluated two different coatings one with a 40 mineral load, and one with a 51 load. &ldquoon our equipment, we determined that, at least to start with, it makes more sense to run the 40percent mineral load,&rdquo says dreshfield. &ldquoone reason is that it is a little easier to run on our extrusioncoating lines, and we are still optimizing the process.
The other is that the 40percent mineral load performs much more like straight ldpe in downstream filling operations, such as heatsealing.&rdquo according to dreshfield, changes to the production process at clearwater paper as a result of the new coating included the need for a secondary feed system to feed the coating material separately into the extrusion coating lines. &ldquothe setup and runnability are also a little bit different than a straight ldpe,&rdquo he adds. Clearwater paper is now a licensee of earthcoating for its line of candesce paperboard products.
The ec40 coating, made of 40 cao3 and 60 ldpe, is supplied by compounder standridge color corp., with the mineral content sourced from omya worldwide. For the trials, high liner packed a number of cartons coated with ec40 with frozen product and conducted freezer and shipping tests. &ldquofinally, we assessed the packaging as it appeared on shelf to ensure that everything performed as anticipated,&rdquo says goguelet. &ldquothe staff at high liner was pleased with the excellent results of the test.&rdquo reeling in savings in late 2011, high liner launched the first of the new earthcoatingcoated cartons into the retail market. Using a life cycle analysis of the raw materials performed by compounder heritage plastics as a guide, high liner expects to reduce and remove up to 40,000 lb of plastic per year. Not only does the new packaging use fewer petroleumbased materials, but &ldquothe largersized cartons are also now recyclable where local municipalities have the appropriate facilities,&rdquo goguelet says. Additionally, the lca suggests that by switching to earthcoating versus 100 ldpe, high liner will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 10 from 2,625 co2 equivalent lbton to 2,362 co2 equivalent lbton, and will reduce energy use from 232 kwton to approximately 228 kwton. Smart planet&rsquos tilton explains that the reduction in energy represents a comparison between the manufacturing costs of extracting and processing petrochemicals, and the energy required to mine and process the minerals. Reflecting on the packaging transition, goguelet says &ldquoour goal was to make an important stride toward sustainability with minimum impact on the supply chain.
