CCL Label presents thinnest stretch sleeve that puts sustainability first

Label Solutions

CCL Label has announced an innovation that was developed in-house at its Voelkermarkt site in Austria. The sleeve label hub presents the thinnest stretch sleeve, with a thickness of 30 micron. It was especially designed for returnable one litre PET bottles that are typically used in the German mineral water market.

‘This extremely thin stretch sleeve was developed with sustainability in mind. With 30 micron the sleeve is a lot thinner than the ‘standard’ 45 micron sleeves that are usually used. This accounts for efficiency on the material side – a lot less raw material is needed to manufacture this sleeve and thus it helps reduce the carbon footprint of the product,’ said Thorsten Umek, product manager at CCL Voelkermarkt. ‘We calculated that beverage brands can save up to 32 tonnes of plastic material per 100 million sleeves – which is approximately the weight of over five adult African elephants.’

Stretch sleeve technology itself has several sustainability advantages. They are made from mono-PE (polypropylene) material that has a high degree of elasticity. This means that no adhesives and no heat is necessary to apply the sleeve to the bottle or other container – it attaches itself and stays in place with the help of its own elasticity. On top of that it is possible to integrate different percentages of recycled content into stretch sleeves from several sources – including post consumer recyclate material.

‘Stretch sleeves have been a popular decoration technology for the German mineral water industry that traditionally has been a returnable scheme. Typically, re-usable one litre bottles made from rigid PET and increasingly rPET are used – which already is a very sustainable system itself. Now the bottle can have an even lower environmental footprint by combining it with the super thin stretch sleeves that we just launched,’ explained Stefan Schaeffert, business development manager at CCL Label.