‘The new black’ makes recycling possible

Simply by replacing the colour ‘carbon black’ with a new type of black, ice cream producer Diplom-Is makes it possible to recycle ice cream containers for its Royal brand.

Non-carbon black is the new black – and at the forefront of this trend is Norwegian ice cream producer Diplom-Is. Recently, the company replaced the carbon black colour containers previously used for its Royal brand with non-carbon black containers from Berry Superfos.

Communications manager Anne-Lene Molland at Diplom-Is,says:

“We are always on the lookout for more sustainable and affordable packaging solutions for our products so when we got the opportunity to switch our premium ice cream brand Royal to non-carbon black containers, the choice was easy.”

“We are very satisfied with the result. The new black enables proper sorting of Royal ice cream containers at local recycling and sorting facilities which can save significant amounts of virgin plastic material. We have been very thorough in our approach by successfully testing the non-carbon black containers at two local recycling plants in Norway, as well as at a sorting plant in Germany.”

A helping hand to infra-red scanning
Contrary to traditional carbon black, new non-carbon black packaging is detectable by the Near Infra-Red (NIR) scanners for waste sorting processes. This means that the containers can be sorted for recycling purposes. Berry Superfos uses a special high-quality non-carbon black masterbatch with special pigments to improve NIR technology detection and sorting.

Diplom-Is sets the example for black plastic packaging
Diplom-Is is one of the biggest ice cream producers and a household brand in Norway. Therefore, the shift to a non-carbon black container has caught the attention of the market.

“We get a lot of positive feedback and have raised awareness of the challenges with the colour black for packaging through articles and social media. We believe these initiatives may encourage others to switch to non-carbon black for packaging.”

A thumbs-up for reliability
The partnership between Diplom-Is and Berry Superfos is a long-lasting relationship. Anne-Lene Molland says:

“Our choice of Berry Superfos for packaging supplier is first of all a question of getting the right quality. Another advantage is their capability to follow up quickly and make any necessary improvements to the packaging; for example, to optimise the workflow in our production. We also give the Berry Superfos team a thumbs-up for their professionalism, reliability and for being easy to work with.”

Read more about non-carbon black