Mondi, a global packaging and paper company, has launched a new, more sustainable sleeve packaging, created to replace conventional plastic shrink wrap around 1.5 liter sparkling soft drink multipacks produced by Coca-Cola HBC in Austria and keep them secure. Mondi’s Hug-IT, which keeps six bottles together during transportation, is made of Mondi’s Advantage SpringPack Plus, crowned by Guinness World Records as the strongest paper in the world. (The strength of this brown MF grade was demonstrated by lifting a 4.2-ton container on a single sheet. In 2003, Mondi says it unofficially broke its own record by parking and lifting a 9.8-ton locomotive on a single sheet.)

The Hug-IT sleeve has high tensile strength and incomparable stretchability, Mondi says, so it can be trusted to wrap around the six bottles tightly, keeping them upright and held together during transit – from factory site, to retailer, to the consumer’s home. It will secure 1.5-liter PET multipacks of the Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, and Mezzo Mix brands and will be sold in retail outlets throughout Austria. Hug-IT is an innovative solution, and Advantage SpringPack Plus is currently touted as the only paper on the market offering such capabilities, being strong enough to hold the bottle bundles together as a final Hug-IT solution.

Advantage SpringPack Plus is 100% kraft paper made from wood that is FSC certified (with the licence code C012179) as being made with responsibly sourced fibers and recyclable in existing paper recycling streams: paper has one of the highest recycling rates among packaging materials in Europe (82% within the EU) and is convenient to dispose of for consumers.

The Hug-IT solution has taken three years to complete, from conception through to planning, trialing, and getting the product onto the shelf. Its development involved a number of Mondi’s divisions, making the most of the company’s expertise in paper packing and converting and creating more sustainable, technically advanced solutions. The sleeves are engineered on automated machinery provided by Krones, a technology group and service provider for the beverage and liquid food industry, whose swift installation and close collaboration with Mondi made the process smooth and efficient. Expert teams from Mondi, Coca-Cola HBC, and Krones worked closely together to meet the challenges related to required strength and stretchability of the paper.

Felix Sprenger, supply chain director at Coca-Cola HBC Austria, comments, “The careful use of resources and recyclable materials is one of the most important pillars in our sustainability strategy and plays a central role in the design of the sustainable packaging mix for the Austrian market. With the introduction of our new solution, which is unique in the world to date, we will be able to reduce material use by a further 200 tons of plastic per year in the future. It was a pleasure to work with Mondi and our other partners to jointly walk the talk contributing to a circular economy.”

Silvia Hanzelova, sales director, Speciality Kraft Paper at Mondi, adds, “Our approach is paper where possible, plastic when useful – and the shrink wrap solution that is used for bundling bottles across continents and industries provides the ideal opportunity to put that into practice. By producing a paper as strong as this, we are able to replicate what the plastic shrink wrap does, delivering secure and safe transportation of multipacks with our Hug-IT paper sleeves that reduce plastic use.”