Gunze to launch sustainable part-plastic film

Gunze will launch an eco-friendly “GEOPLAS HCT3” heat-shrinkable film with recycled resin in January 2023.

The product is a polystyrene/polyethylene terephthalate multi-layered product that uses 30% of chemical recycled raw materials with the mass balance approach. The new product will first be launched in Japan and then expanded to the U.S. and ASEAN markets.

The company  established: "Promoting a basic policy towards a recycling system for plastics" and evolved a strategy of "Conversion to recycled and bio-attributed raw materials” in December 2019 and declared that 50% of the raw materials used by the plastics business would be recycled and biomass by 2027 and increase the ratio to 100% by 2030.

Gunze claims it has achieved excellent shrinkage performance and stiffness by adding functions through multilayer technology of different materials and has promoted eco-friendly management by reducing the thickness of hybrid shrink film.

The company will strengthen its efforts to realize sustainable economy by using recycled raw materials for the hybrid shrinkable film which is one of the main products in plastic business. And the launch of the new product is one of the efforts to reduce petroleum materials usage and GHG emissions.

The company will launch the shrinkable film with 30% recycled material this time and aim to increase the ratio to 50% by 2024 and the ratio to 100% by 2030.

The product is a polystyrene/polyethylene terephthalate multi-layered product using multilayer oriented film technology. It is widely used globally as shrink labels for PET bottled beverages, foods, cosmetics, home & personal care products and other products.