Imagine the weight of a billion elephants. This is equivalent to the 8 300 million metric tonnes of plastic produced since large-scale production began in the 1950s.
Plastic is accumulating in seas, oceans and on beaches in the European Union and worldwide. Turtles, seals, whales and birds get entangled in our plastic waste or ingest it.
To cut plastic pollution, the European Union introduced a ban in 2021 on single-use plastics, including plates and cutlery. The ban, paired with a change in people’s habits driven by the negative image of plastics, created a gap in the market and became a significant business opportunity for food packaging companies.
Operating from its commercial site in Valladolid, Spain, PackBenefit is an innovative producer of compostable and recyclable food trays made from wood-based virgin pulp. Virgin pulp is paper made directly from the pulp of trees or cotton. The company’s trays can be used in the oven, microwave and freezer, in temperatures between -30°C to 150°C - better than plastic trays.
“The advisory support played an important role in accessing EIB financing. This perfectly complemented the investment by Circularity Capital. Without the comprehensive support of the Bank, we would not have been able to achieve our expansion, and research, development and innovation progress in such a timeframe.”
The new production plant, financed by the EIB venture debt agreement alongside equity from Circularity Capital and third-party loans, will enable the company to manufacture an additional 180 million trays per year, greatly reducing the food-packaging industry’s use of plastic.
