UPM Raflatac’s Forest Film label material has received the 2020 Innovation in Responsible Sourcing Award from the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC). The announcement came on Wednesday, September 30, at the SPC Innovator Awards ceremony as part of this year’s SPC Advance virtual event. UPM Raflatac says Forest Film is the world’s first polypropylene film label material derived entirely from wood-based sources based on mass balance approach.

"Forest Film deserves attention for being a notable introduction of bio-based polypropylene with a well understood feedstock and an assurance mechanism for responsible sourcing,” says Adam Gendell, associate director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. "It is a significant advancement in the field of bio-based plastics, and we feel it's earned its status as the winner of Innovation in Responsible Sourcing in the 2020 SPC Innovator Awards.”

UPM Biofuels, UPM Raflatac’s sister company, converts pulp production residue called crude tall oil from sustainably managed forests into renewable naphtha, a drop-in raw material for the chemical industry. This product, called UPM BioVerno, is sent to a resin supplier and then a film supplier to convert it into the filmic face material UPM Raflatac then manufactures into the laminate label material known as Forest Film. 

It is an International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS-certified product, meaning it uses sustainable resources to replace an equivalent amount of fossil resources in the production process – the mass balance approach. The company says Forest Film products are proven to deliver savings on greenhouse gas emissions.

“Thank you to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition for this tremendous honor,” says Tyler Matusevich, UPM Raflatac’s sustainability manager for the Americas. “Responsible sourcing is top priority for our company because raw materials are one of our biggest sources of environmental impact.”

Visit https://www.upm.com/ for more information.