So that the contents keep what the packaging promises.
Naturally sustainable.

Antipasti for a cozy dinner with family or friends at home or a few soft drinks for a picnic in the park? When we have to shop quickly, most of us intuitively choose particularly original or attractively packaged products. ALTANA’s ACTEGA and ECKART divisions have literally brilliant solutions for this. But they also pay attention to “inner values” such as freshness, shelf life, hygiene protection of food, and of course resource efficiency. As a consequence, we consumers can enjoy exactly what the beautiful exterior promises without undesirable ingredients in the packaging.

Unrivalled for ten years: PVC- and plasticizer-free can seals
Consumers can recognize the innovation from the blue ring on the inside of jar lids. Selected specialty food manufacturers even advertise PROVALIN® on the label. This comes as no surprise, because for ten years this ACTEGA brand has been the only alternative to conventional PVC seals for metal vacuum closures. The background: PVC contains plasticizers that can migrate into the food and thus be harmful to human health. The PROVALIN® product family from ACTEGA, however, is PVC- and plasticizer-free and today offers suitable solutions for all types of bulk goods, metal vacuum closures, and filling processes.

Large beverage producers, in particular, not only focus on the quality of their products and having the ideal packaging, but also want to conserve packaging material. This not only reduces production costs but also protects the environment. And more and more consumers are attaching importance to this. For decades, therefore, the trend has been toward ever-thinner glass bottles. However, reducing the amount of steel needed with thinner crown caps long seemed to be an almost unattainable goal. Since the American William Painter applied for a patent almost 130 years ago, the principle of the crown cork has hardly changed. The problem: Thinner crown caps deform more easily, for example when bottles collide during transport.

But the experts at ACTEGA didn’t give up. Their solution: a more efficient, softer, and more flexible seal. The result is a minor revolution that makes each individual crown cork 0.4 grams lighter. That doesn’t sound like much, but just one bottler saves around 10,000 tons of steel from the 25 billion crown corks produced each year. So the CO₂ footprint is improved almost automatically, as less steel also means less energy and lower transport costs. Almost all of the leading beverage brands have switched to the ACTEGA solution.

Forego waste, but not gloss and glamour
Revolutions are also the core business of ACTEGA Metal Print, a startup within the ALTANA Group. The high-tech engineers based in Lehrte near Hannover are now launching a novel technology that achieves decorative metallic effects with significantly less material, costs, and production time than was required in previously common processes. You can’t tell by looking at the labels in the supermarket, but what shines and shimmers on the supermarket shelves is first applied to large sections of foil in conventional manufacturing processes. Only a fraction of it is later found on wine bottles, chocolate boxes, and cosmetics. The rest is thrown away with the foil without ever leaving the production hall. Resource efficiency is different and has a name: EcoLeaf. This technology uses the exact amount of metallic pigment needed to produce the metallized motif, thus making the foils superfluous. The waste that used to be generated in the process is a thing of the past. Thanks to the effect pigment specialists at ECKART, nobody has to do without gloss and glamour anyway.