We are proud to announce that Huhtamaki is launching its Push Tab® blister lid onto the market – an aluminium-free blister pack cover film made from mono material PET. This is a completely sustainable innovation for the global pharmaceutical and healthcare industry.
The growing importance of sustainability in the healthcare sector, even for the most demanding packaging applications, has led us to this innovation. The result is a ready for recycling alternative to standard push-through blister packaging, making it a truly ground-breaking innovation.
Push Tab® blister lid is not only a sustainable packaging solution for the growing global pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, but at the same time provides outstanding functionality and efficiency since Push Tab® blister lid can be used on existing blister packaging lines without compromising on speed.
Because our Push Tab® blister lid is made from the mono material PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the recyclability of the packaging is significantly improved; at the same time it is compatible with existing high-performance blister packaging lines – no changes or additional investments are required. Huhtamaki and its partner Klöckner Pentaplast are the first o bring this innovation to market, in the process supporting the global healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors in achieving their sustainability goals as well as ensuring market growth. In 2021, European packaging sales in the healthcare category had an estimated value of €1.4 billion of which around 50 % was generated by blister packaging.
“Together with our partner Klöckner Pentaplast we are proud to bring the Push Tab® blister lid to market, continuing to shape the sustainable future of pharmaceutical and flexible packaging. This innovation is part of our blueloop platform which enables us to accelerate innovation and improve the ability of flexible high-performance packaging solutions to play their part in the recycling loop. We are working hard to transform all our products into completely recyclable mono materials.
In addition, we are working with partners along the entire value creation chain to develop innovations which contribute to achieving ambitious sustainability goals around the world,” says Marco Hilty, President of Flexible Packaging at Huhtamaki.
“The pharmaceutical industry is proactively looking for sustainable packaging solutions that enable recyclability. Since blister packaging traditionally contains several different materials, it is difficult to recycle them in a single recycling stream. Push Tab® blister lid solves this problem because it is made from mono PET. Push Tab® can be used on existing blister packaging lines and is a plug-and-play solution which means our customers don’t need to make any additional investments.
This newly developed, unique technology means that PET-based cover films can be used as a push-through solution and provides the consumer with easy access to tablets,” says Tobias Fackler, Senior Manager of the Healthcare Business Unit at Huhtamaki Flexible Packaging.