Innovative secondary packaging company TRAKRAP has been shortlisted for an impressive three gongs in this year's UK Packaging Awards, the biggest and most prestigious awards ceremony for the packaging sector.

The UK Packaging Awards are unique in recognising every area of the packaging supply chain. The categories reward not only packaging quality but consistency, business strategy, financial performance and environmental impact.

TRAKRAP's innovative new packaging system, which is capable of minimising waste and reducing carbon emissions, has been shortlisted in three categories: Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year; Resource Efficient Pack of the Year and Retail Ready Pack of the Year.

Established as an alternative to shrink wrapping, TRAKRAP is a new and unique secondary packaging system, developed to help supermarkets' achieve their commitment to deliver lighter weight, lower cost and more energy efficient transit and retail ready packaging.

The TRAKRAP system eliminates the use of heat, as applied in shrink wrap systems, substituting it with seven microns thick C8 LLDPE - a 100% recyclable polymer film that is lighter and, when combined with innovative TrakRap corrugate tray designs, uses less cardboard making it suitable for ambient, fresh and frozen products. Flexibility on operating speeds has also proved to be a major advantage.

During an extensive trial with Dale Farm, part of the United Dairy Farmers Group, TRAKRAP replaced three shrink wrapping machines, used to package Yoghurts and Crème Fraiche ready for transport and distribution, with its own machines. During the 12 month trial, Dale Farm's film usage was reduced by 68%, achieving a CO2 reduction of 87 tonnes per annum and a lower cost per pack.

In addition, the company has reduced its pack wrapping energy usage by 95%. Typically, food industry heat tunnels are rated around 30Kw/hr and over a two shift system, 3 tunnels can burn up to 125Mw of electricity each year. The TRAKRAP system at Dale Farm uses virtually no energy when idle and 0.75 Kw/hr when flat out, using less than 3 Mw of electricity to do the same work.

The UK Packaging Awards were presented on Wednesday 13 November at the London Hilton on Park Lane, London.

We are delighted to announce that we have secured a contract with consumer healthcare manufacturer EM Pharma to replace its existing packaging system with a more sustainable solution.

We are currently in the process of replacing EM Pharma's existing shrink wrap heat tunnels with our new stretch wrapping packaging system which will deliver significant energy savings and lessen EM Pharma's environmental impact, without any capital expenditure.

The TrakRap system uses bespoke 100% recyclable polymer film to wrap products and bond the pack together. Removing the requirement for heat tunnels the system uses 90% less energy than traditional shrink wrapping– which also makes it more suitable for ambient, chilled, frozen or volatile products. Innovative TrakRap trays, developed with ReelVision, work with the film and allow for up to 40% less cartonboard to be used, resulting in lighter weight, 100% recyclable retail ready packaging (RRP) for retailers.

EM Pharma approached us looking for a packaging solution to reduce the company's carbon footprint and cut energy costs, whilst being flexible enough to cope with upscaled production.

Kevan Abley, Managing Director of EM Pharma said: "Secondary packaging for the pharmaceutical sector presents a unique spread of challenges. Constant new product development means that new lines can be added on a weekly basis and the breadth of our product range means that our machinery has to adapt to different pack sizes and configurations. Increasingly, major retailers are discouraging the use of RPET trays for sustainability reasons, so we had to find a method of packaging which protected the product, presented it on the shelf and ticked the sustainability box.

"Our heat tunnels consume huge amounts of energy and contribute to an uncomfortable working environment with soaring temperatures and noise. We were also very aware that we were wasting large amounts of film when wrapping smaller packs. After researching our options, we realised that the best approach was take a holistic view of secondary packaging, looking at the whole process – the film, machinery and tray, rather than each individual element. This led us to stretch film wrapping, which completely eliminates heat from the wrapping process. It allows us to be very responsive, and is easily configured to different pack sizes – eliminating film waste."

We have recently developed a new packaging innovation capable of minimising waste and reducing carbon emissions - whilst using the same amount of energy as the domestic kettle.

Established as an alternative to shrink wrapping, TrakRap is a new and unique secondary packaging system, developed to help supermarkets achieve their commitment to deliver lighter weight, lower cost and more energy efficient transit and retail ready packaging. It eliminates the use of heat, as applied in shrink wrap systems, substituting it with seven microns thick C8 LLDPE - a 100% recyclable polymer film that is lighter and, when combined with innovative TrakRap corrugate tray designs, uses less cardboard, making it suitable for ambient, fresh and frozen products. Flexibility on operating speeds has also proved to be a major advantage.

During an extensive trial with Dale Farm, part of the United Dairy Farmers Group, we replaced three shrink wrapping machines, used to package Yoghurts and Crème Fraiche ready for transport and distribution, with our own machines. During the 12 month trial, Dale Farm's film usage was reduced by a massive 68%, achieving a CO2 reduction of 87 tonnes per annum and a lower cost per pack. Impressive results!

In addition, the company has reduced its pack wrapping energy usage by 95%. Typically food industry heat tunnels are rated around 30Kw/hr and over a two shift system, 3 tunnels can burn up to 125Mw of electricity each year. The TrakRap system uses virtually no energy when idle and 2Kw/hr when operating at full speed, using only 5Mw of electricity to do the same work.

The objective set by our customer was simple, to deliver a lower cost, 25% more environmentally friendly, pack.

Through clever cardboard engineering we created a pack that is 40% lighter than the existing 0201 "Rip Top" Box. The new case uses E Flute corrugate instead of the existing B Flute to deliver a case that provides both the protection required for transit, and the RRP credentials required for the shelf and all delivered with the minimum amount of material possible

The integrity of the pack was completed using 3.2g of 7 micron stretch film wrapped around the product and case, using the revolutionary Trak-Rap System. No environmentally unfriendly heat tunnel was required and the use of completely transparent, 100% recyclable stretch wrap film ensured the product was easily identifiable by store warehouse colleagues and quick to prepare for the shelf.

We were delighted to exceed our customer's objectives and deliver a 40% reduction in both pack weight and carbon footprint.

The objective was straight forward, to make a more environmentally friendly pack and remove the existing heat tunnels that are both environmentally unfriendly and cause high ambient temperatures particularly in the summer months.

The existing packaging consists of PET trays that are shrink wrapped with 40 micron film put through a heat tunnel process. Working with our customer we were able to replace the film with 100% recyclable, 7 micron stretch film, reducing the film weights by 68% and replace the heat tunnel with the Trak-Wrap system to reduce energy costs by 97%

The original tray has been retained to maintain the excellent presentation on the supermarket shelves but the new film is quicker to remove and dispose of improving replenishment efficiency.

We were delighted to meet our customer's objectives. For the film element of the pack we reduced the weight by 68% and the carbon footprint by 52%.

The objective was extremely demanding, to be the UK leader in secondary packaging carbon emissions and at a lower cost.

Through extensive research and trialling we were able to replace the 0201 box and tape with a lightweight e flute corrugate tray.

The tray and frozen product were then sent through the new Trak-Rap system and bound with 4g of 7 micron, 100 recyclable, stretch film. The specific challenge to overcome was the weight of the individual cases and the loads put on the lower cases in the Pallet stack, together with the Frozen environment.

Working together we were able to overcome these issues to produce a pack that is 35% lighter and reduces the carbon footprint of the secondary packaging by 25%, meeting our customer's objective.