ITALY: Ferrero develops packaging from waste hazelnuts and cocoa beans | Progresiv
Italian confectionery giant Ferrero has teamed up with renewable packaging company Stora Enso to find a productive use for the hazelnut shells and cocoa bean peel left over from the production of its confectionery products. 
The resulting material – dubbed EcoPaper – is made of waste material that has been converted using a dry milling process and then added to the middle layer of a triplex folding box board. There, it acts as a partial replacement for virgin cellulosic fibres. Hence, the waste materials are upcycled as raw materials for board production and not being treated as waste, leading to a more sustainable and economical packaging solution.
The technology has been co-developed by the German research institute PTS as part of a 1.2 million euros project, which has been part-funded by the European Union.
The production methods were developed in Italy and Germany during the program’s laboratory phase in 2011. The results were then transferred to the pilot plant in mid-2012, and EcoPaper now intends to scale this up to an industrial level.
Ferrero’s coordinator on the project said: “We have access to large amounts of residual by-products which we realised could be used constructively. Initial hurdles concerned how to process the waste before use, but we overcame those problems by refining the milling process.” (www.foodbev.com)
