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Global leader in rigid and flexible packaging and specialty film solutions, Klöckner Pentaplast (kp), is set to build on the success of last year’s expert discussion sessions by sharing its unique insights on how to navigate the EU Plastic and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) at FachPack 2025.  

Between 23 - 25 September, at the Nuremberg Exhibition Centre in Nuremberg, Germany, kp will deliver expert-led, 20-minute presentations in Hall 4 on Booth 122. Six sessions will be held across the three-day event, which has historically brought more than 37,000 trade visitors through its doors. Sessions will be held in both English and German.

Vincent Gass, VP Strategic Marketing and Innovation, Food Packaging, at kp, commented: “FachPack continues to be the place to meet key industry members across Europe and the DACH region and always delivers insightful commentary on today’s packaging landscape. At kp, we will add to those discussions by building on the success of last year’s presentations with our PPWR-focused sessions. We know that complying with PPWR remains a key challenge for many of our customers, so FachPack is a great platform to help field questions and share our expertise in this area.”

The daily sessions will be held at kp’s booth at 11:30 (German) and 15:00 (English) on 23 and 24 September, and 09:30 (German) and 11:30 (English) on 25 September. There will be an opportunity to network with members of the kp team, with light refreshments, immediately after the presentations.

Alongside the sessions, delegates visiting the booth will be able to get hands-on with the company’s flagship products and latest innovations in an immersive packaging experience, using its Augmented Reality (AR) demo technology.

“Our AR demonstrations are an excellent opportunity for visitors to experience the breakthrough way in which we share our high-quality, innovative packaging solutions with our customers,” continued Vincent Gass. “Interaction, ideas and innovation are the driving forces behind our business. Key industry events like FachPack are an excellent opportunity for us to learn from, engage with, and showcase our latest innovations to visitors, enabling us all to propel the industry towards a more sustainable world.”

Effective immediately, Südpack’s high-performance tubular pouch films from the premium Pure-Line range are being consolidated into a dedicated product family and marketed under the CarbonLite® brand. Based on PP and PE mono-materials, these films can be processed on both horizontal and vertical flow pack machines into flowpacks, doypacks (with or without spouts), and block-bottom pouches. Most importantly, their recyclability and optimized material efficiency result in a significantly smaller carbon footprint compared to conven-tional multi-material laminates or heavier tray packaging – offering clear eco-nomic advantages, including lower disposal costs.

Südpack’s next-generation top webs are ideal for MAP applications and have been engineered for greater sustainability. For example, a CarbonLite PurePP flowpack uses up to 60% less material than a conventional tray, while the packa-ging concept also achieves recyclability rates of up to 92% – verifiable by external institutes. For horizontal PE-based flow pack applications, Südpack has achie-ved a further reduction in film thickness while maintaining barrier properties and cutting material usage by an additional 10%.

In addition, by adopting Südpack’s sustainable packaging concepts, manufacturers and packagers can typically achieve a shorter time-to-market – supported by Südpack’s co-extrusion ex-pertise, comprehensive service, and in-house application center.

The films in the CarbonLite® series are suitable, for example, for use as light-weight PE flowpacks for cuts of cheese, baguettes, mozzarella, and coffee; as PP flowpacks for ground meat and convenience products; and as stand-up PE do-ypacks for grated cheese and salami sticks, as well as PP doypacks for confectio-nery, dried fruit, nuts, and other snacks. For coffee applications, the films can also be processed into stable PP or PE block-bottom pouches, and into conve-nient PP spouted pouches for fruit purées.

Despite their wide range of applications, all films share one essential feature: barrier properties precisely tailored to each product – such as protection against oxygen and water vapor – that ensure a long shelf life for a wide variety of foods. For enhanced product visibility, a high-performance anti-fog feature can be added if required.

At the same time, the films can be processed efficiently on standard packaging machines, even at high cycle rates. A key factor in ensuring both product and packaging reliability is the films’ consistently strong sealing performance, a result of their high thermal resistance – even when incorporating zippers, spouts, or valves made from the same mono-material.

As a leader in sustainability and the circular economy in the plastics and packaging industry, Südpack considers more than just the carbon footprint and end-of-life of its films. With its groundbreaking SPQ printing technology, the company also makes package printing more sustainable – significantly reducing ink and solvent consumption while enhancing color brilliance. The film manufacturer, which has committed to the SBTi and was one of only a few companies to achieve Platinum status in the EcoVadis ranking in 2025, also offers its advanced LCA service – a powerful tool for assessing the eco-balance of various packaging concepts. This service evaluates not only SÜDPACK’s own product developments but also customer solutions.

The MycoTechnology Board of Directors has appointed Dr. Robert Scott as a member of the board.  

Dr. Scott is a food and beverage industry executive with 25+ years of leadership experience across corporate, academic, and nonprofit sectors. He is an accomplished innovation leader, bringing new technologies to the market, leading the implementation of strategic initiatives, and driving organizational transformation.

Established in 2013 and based outside Denver, Colorado, MycoTechnology harnesses the power of nature to create breakthrough solutions for a healthier world. Using advanced fermentation technology, the company delivers value-added ingredients for better tasting, healthier and sustainable food.

“We are thrilled to welcome Robert to the MycoTechnology Board of Directors,” said Rob Case, Chairman of the Board, MycoTechnology. “Robert’s broad understanding of the food and beverage industry and specifically his beverage category sweetener expertise will be especially valuable as we commercialize and bring to market our revolutionary new ingredient, Honey Truffle Sweet Protein, which is naturally derived from the honey truffle and delivers a uniquely clean taste profile with minimal off-notes.”

“In addition, Robert’s contributions to the board will be important by providing the customer view as we continue to expand our portfolio of natural ingredient solutions from mushroom mycelia fermentation into the global food and beverage markets,” said Jordi Ferre, CEO, MycoTechnology. Since May 2025, Dr. Scott has been the president of Albany State University (Albany, GA).

Previously, he was President, R&D at Kraft Heinz, where he led the transformation of a global R&D organization through strategic innovation and operational alignment. At Coca-Cola, Dr. Scott was Vice President, R&D, where he led new ingredient discovery, sweetener technology development and led R&D teams in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, China and Japan. As a Division Vice President at Abbott Nutrition, he was the senior R&D leader accountable for product development. Dr. Scott began his business career at Procter & Gamble. His academic career includes Associate Dean at Spelman College and Boston College, and Assistant Professor of Biology at Norfolk State University.

At this year’s Fachpack, Schubert will be impressively demonstrating that compact solutions are possible with a cartoner from its ‘lightline’ series and a new, versatile high-performance erection unit. The exceptionally agile tog.519 cobot, which will be picking biscuits at remarkable speed at a partner company’s stand, will also be on display at the trade fair.

With its lightline series, Schubert is targeting manufacturers who have standardised packaging tasks and need to be ready for production quickly. The lightline range includes cartoners, case packers, picker lines and flow-wrapping machines – all made from preconfigured modules. They enable quick planning and assembly times at extremely attractive investment costs.

Packing bars in the smallest of spaces The lightline cartoner exhibited at FACHPACK – to be seen as a bar packer at the stand – goes a long way towards achieving the targeted efficiency: thanks to a single-lane A3 erector with a vertical magazine, the machine saves a significant amount of space without ever compromising on performance. Up to 4,000 blanks fit into the cartoner’s recently developed vertical magazine, enabling the system to run continuously for 60 minutes. Schubert will also be presenting the single-lane A3 erector for the first time as a stand-alone machine unit in the form of the tog.101: “The 100% standardised tog.101 box erector guarantees high performance of up to 60 boxes per minute in a wide range of packaging lines,” says Ralf Schubert, explaining the stand-alone approach.

The tog.101 stands out not only due to its compact design and high performance, but also thanks to its ease of operation. Setting up box formats takes just a few minutes and is done simply by entering parameters such as box dimensions and glue points. A glue applicator developed with Robatech also enables glue-saving erection: the tog.101 control system adjusts the erector speed and the amount of glue applied so that just enough glue is applied to securely bond the box. This approach requires less hot melt adhesive than is customary in the industry.

The Elgin, Illinois-based Middleby Corporation, a leading worldwide manufacturer of equipment solutions for commercial foodservice, food processing, and residential kitchens, has announced the acquisition of the Darmstadt, Germany-based Oka-Spezialmaschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG (Oka), expanding its portfolio of Middleby Food Processing equipment innovations.  

Oka is a leading designer and manufacturer of industrial extrusion, molding, depositing and cutting industrial production equipment in bakery, confectionery and pet-food markets. The company has annual revenues of USD 12 m.

“Oka is a perfect complement and strategic fit, adding important product categories to our solutions for bakery customers. Oka is known for its advanced engineering capabilities, with an ability to provide unique and high-value customer-driven solutions,” said Tim FitzGerald, Middleby CEO. “We expect meaningful sales synergies, as this further enhances our full-line bakery solution offerings to new and existing customers, while also expanding Oka’s reach beyond the German market.”

The acquisition further strengthens Middleby’s ability to provide long term shareholder value in the food processing business after the spinoff is completed in 2026. The Middleby Corporation develops and manufactures a broad line of solutions used in commercial foodservice, food processing, and residential kitchens. Middleby showcases its advanced solutions in the Middleby Innovation Kitchens for commercial foodservice, industrial baking and protein Innovation Centers for food processing solutions and state-of-the-art, award-winning Middleby Residential showrooms.

The company shows the advantages of Berthold's measurement solutions for microwave measurement. The advantages are:

• Online total solids or density measurement

• Optimisation & control of the production process • Cost reduction through optimised use of resources

• Optimised pump utilisation avoids blockages and ensures optimum efficiency • Non-optical measurement, not sensitive to contamination therefore no cleaning required

• Not sensitive to film build-up

Typical applications in food industry  are gummy bears, fruit gummy, and jelly deserts

The measuring principle The microwaves pass through the product to be measured, causing rotation of the free water molecules. They have excellent dielectric properties. This rotation causes the microwaves to slow down (phase shift) and decrease in amplitude (attenuation), resulting in a very accurate measurement of the water content. Thanks to the multi-frequency technique used by Berthold, the measurements are highly reliable and stable and are not affected by reflectance or resonance. The integrated reference line provides excellent compensation of the influence of environmental parameters. As the device generates very low power microwaves (about 0.1 mW), the measured product does not undergo any temperature rise or changes. The radio licenses for the system have been approved by the FCC, IC and ETSI

For the second year in a row, the company has emerged as the industry winner in the “Germany’s Best in the Circular Economy study” – in the “Packaging Man-ufacturer” category. The family-owned company group, which is actively driving a true circular economy in the plastics and packaging industry through innovative products and its commitment to both mechanical and chemical recycling, once again set the industry benchmark in 2025 – achieving a total score of 100.0 points, the highest among all companies evaluated in the category.

For the 2025 study, ServiceValue GmbH and the F.A.Z. Institute conducted a two-stage, in-depth monitoring process based on social listening data from approximately 13,000 companies across various industries. From May 1, 2023, to April 30, 2025, a total of 5 million mentions were identified, categorized, and weighted according to both reach and sentiment balance. As in the previous year, performance was evaluated based on three dimensions: ecological sus-tainability (50%), economic sustainability (30%), as well as overall sustainability (20%).

Südpack’s ability to secure the top spot once again in 2025 – following its first-place ranking in 2024 – is the result of a corporate strategy consistently focused on sustainability. The family-owned company has made “Leadership in Sustain-ability” its clear mission. With pioneering recyclable and material-efficient film and packaging concepts, expanded capacities and technologies for compound-ing, regranulation, and chemical recycling, as well as numerous circular econo-my projects in collaboration with its customers, Südpack has set new stand-ards and paved the way toward a sustainable future. In addition, the compa-ny’s experts bring their knowledge and passion to industry associations and organizations such as IK, FPE, and CEFLEX – and are actively involved in shaping the future of the PPWR in a meaningful way.