Ing. Alberto Castellanza, Director of Markets and Products Development at Novamont S.p.A., discusses the company’s ovenable ready meal tray, developed in collaboration with CCM. It combines bioplastics with paper to meet paper mono material definition. It was nominated in the Driving the Circular Economy category of this year’s Sustainability Awards.
You’re a finalist in the Sustainability Awards 2026. Congratulations! To start off, could you summarize your entry in less than 50 words?
Thanks! We are excited about this result. Our ovenable ready-meal tray is the result of the joint work to combine Novamont’s Mater-Bi® bioplastic with CCM’s technology for paperboard conversion. The tray meets the PPWR paper mono material definition addressing circularity challenges, through two validated end-of-life pathways (paper recycling and industrial composting) helping reduce recycling waste and avoiding persistent microplastics generation/release.
Why do you think the judges were impressed with your entry? Tell us about what is innovative about your project and/or about its impact on packaging sustainability.
We believe the judges appreciated the combination of eco-design and validated circular end-of-life options achieved without compromising functionalities. The key to innovation is the realization of a Mater-Bi® (Novamont family of compostable bioplastics) coating less than 5% of the total weight without altering the paperboard grammage. This helps to maintain the demanding performance required for ready meals, including resistance to liquids and fats, microwave heating, and traditional oven use up to 200°C. In addition, thanks to the limitation in coating content, the paper recycling rate performance becomes optimal, reducing the rejects fraction intended for incineration and landfill. An outstanding added value, thanks to Mater-Bi® biodegradable and compostable characteristics, no persistent microplastics are released in the paper streams. At the same time, when the tray is contaminated with food residues, both the packaging and the food waste, thanks to the certified compostablility, can be organically recycled through industrial composting, preventing contamination of paper recycling streams and cross contamination of the composting facilities. Moreover, the compostable coating preserves intrinsic biodegradability of paper. The flexibility of different End of Life scenarios can be implemented in different EU countries by adapting the collection scheme to local recycling infrastructures and waste-management capabilities with the main scope to optimize the recycling ratio incrementing the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) as defined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF).
Finally, can you tell us about the ongoing development of your project, e.g. how your innovation has been received by the industry, or what the next steps are in product development?
The project demonstrated that close collaboration among all actors across the value chain significantly facilitates market uptake, accelerating the commercialization of innovative products. After preliminary optimization carried out in the framework of WOOD4PLASTIC-LIFE-EU project (LIFE23-ENV-ES-WOOD4PLASTIC, Co-funded by the European Union under the LIFE Programme Grant Agreement 101148460) and thanks to the collaboration between Novamont and CCM Packaging, nowadays our solution is validated at industrial scale, ready for commercialization and replication in EU.
The end users appreciated the innovative paper and Mater-Bi® combination, which ensure recyclability and compostability, together with resistance to heat, grease, moisture as well as suitability for microwave and conventional oven (e.g. use up to 200°C/30’). Industrial stakeholders appreciated the solution’s compliance with emerging PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) requirements achieved using less than 5% of coating while preserving full functionalities. Another key aspect valued by brand owners is the fact that the solution helps reduce costs associated with end-of-life management and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes. Our research is continuing and thanks to the support of the Wood4plastic project, Novamont is developing next-generation solutions with an even lower environmental footprint using new generation of sugars derived from hardwood residues for the production of biobased polymers. The objective is to further improve sustainability performance, resource efficiency and circularity while maintaining the functionality required for demanding food-packaging applications.
The winners of this year’s Sustainability Awards are due to be announced on the 11th November at the Sustainable Packaging Summit, taking place from the 10th-12th November in Utrecht, Netherlands. The Summit mobilizes leaders of the FMCG value chain, policymakers, NGOs, recyclers and investors to collaborate, remove barriers and identify opportunities on the road to sustainable transformation.
The European Commission has published new guidance to clarify Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligations for small businesses operating across Member
