Mondi has worked with building materials producer Fixit Gruppe to develop a standardized paper bag portfolio covering more than 100 products across the European market.

The project focuses on reducing unnecessary packaging material, improving packaging design to support recycling and lowering greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining the moisture protection and mechanical performance required for products such as cement and other powdered construction materials.

For Fixit Gruppe, the change also forms part of its wider climate strategy. The company is targeting a reduction of 135 tonnes of CO₂ compared with the previous year.

More Than 100 Products Move Toward a Common Bag Platform

Managing packaging across a large building-material portfolio can result in numerous bag constructions, specifications and material combinations.

Mondi and Fixit Gruppe have sought to simplify that structure.

The project establishes a more unified European paper bag portfolio while maintaining the packaging characteristics required by different products and production locations.

Before developing the new formats, Mondi conducted an audit at its Bag Application Centre in Frantschach, Austria.

Specialists examined Fixit Gruppe’s existing packaging and evaluated areas including material consumption, paper grammage, barrier requirements and the thickness of the plastic inner layer.

The resulting specifications were designed to reduce material where possible without compromising the protection required during filling, transport, storage and use on construction sites.

Paper Grammage and Barrier Layers Were Reassessed

The optimization work illustrates an important aspect of reducing the environmental impact of industrial packaging: changing the package does not necessarily mean replacing the entire packaging system.

Material efficiency can also come from examining individual components and determining whether they are using more material than necessary.

For Fixit Gruppe’s bags, Mondi evaluated both the amount of paper used and the plastic inner layer.

That distinction is important for powdered building materials.

Products such as cement require protection against moisture, meaning packaging lightweighting has to be balanced against barrier performance and the conditions the bags experience throughout the supply chain.

The companies therefore focused on finding specifications capable of reducing material while retaining the required protection.

Sack Kraft Paper Must Also Perform on Filling Lines

Packaging performance during production was another consideration.

Mondi manufactures the sack kraft paper used for the new bags and says the material provides the moisture protection required for the packaged products while supporting reliable filling on Fixit Gruppe’s existing machinery.

For high-volume industrial packaging, this machine compatibility is significant.

Reducing paper grammage or modifying a bag structure can affect properties such as strength and behaviour during filling and handling. A packaging specification that uses less material but creates interruptions on the packing line would offer limited operational benefit.

The project therefore considered packaging performance together with material reduction.

“We needed packaging that protects a wide range of building materials, is practical on construction sites and supports our climate strategy,” said Bernhard Zott, Director of Research & Development at Fixit Gruppe.

He said Mondi worked with Fixit Gruppe’s teams to improve functionality, sustainability and quality requirements.

Standardization Can Extend Beyond Material Reduction

Using a common packaging platform across multiple European markets could also simplify how packaging specifications are managed.

Rather than maintaining numerous independently developed bag constructions, manufacturers can establish common technical requirements and adapt them where individual products require different protection.

For packaging suppliers, this type of standardization creates an opportunity to evaluate material efficiency across an entire product portfolio instead of optimizing individual bags in isolation.

It can also make future packaging changes easier to implement across multiple production sites and markets.

For Fixit Gruppe, the project covers more than 100 building material products, making the scale of the portfolio an important part of the initiative.

Industrial Paper Bags Face Different Design Requirements

Paper-based industrial sacks occupy a different packaging environment from many consumer paper packages.

They can be exposed to considerable mechanical loads, dust, moisture, palletization and demanding transport conditions while also needing to operate efficiently on high-speed filling equipment.

As a result, material reduction has practical limits determined by product protection and handling requirements.

The Mondi and Fixit Gruppe project demonstrates an optimization approach based on examining those requirements individually rather than simply reducing material across every component.

Paper grammage, barrier performance and inner-layer thickness can each be adjusted according to the performance required from the complete bag.

For the wider industrial packaging market, this approach could become increasingly relevant as manufacturers seek to reduce packaging material and emissions without introducing problems elsewhere in production or distribution.

The result is a shift from viewing a paper sack as a fixed specification toward treating it as an engineered packaging structure in which material use, barrier protection, filling performance and end-of-life considerations can be optimized together.

Last Updated on 19/08/2026 by Jota Machinery