Flexible plastic became dominant for a reason.

It is light.

Cheap.

Strong.

Easy to seal.

Easy to print.

And remarkably good at protecting products with only a few grams of material.

Those same properties are also why replacing it has proved so difficult.

The newly launched PaperFlex Consortium brings together six of the world’s largest consumer-goods companies—Colgate-Palmolive, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Unilever—to try to solve that problem collectively.

Convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and powered by (RE)SET, the consortium will fund and conduct joint R&D around paper-based flexible packaging, particularly technologies involving biodegradable coatings, barrier systems and improved performance on manufacturing lines.

At first glance, it looks like another corporate sustainability collaboration.

The more interesting interpretation is industrial.

Six major FMCG companies have effectively concluded that the technical gap between plastic flexibles and paper alternatives is too large—and too expensive—for every brand to solve independently.

That tells us something important about where paper-based flexible packaging actually stands in 2026.

The market has plenty of prototypes.

It has paper wrappers already on shelves.

It has promising coatings.

It has pilot lines.

What it still does not have is a universal paper structure that can match flexible plastic across:

barrier,

sealing,

machine speed,

shelf life,

cost,

consumer experience,

and end-of-life performance.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation says explicitly that paper-based solutions meeting all of its responsible-design criteria do not yet exist at the performance, scale and cost needed for most applications.

PaperFlex exists because that gap remains open.

This is not really a paper-versus-plastic project

That distinction matters.

The consortium is not saying flexible plastic should simply be replaced with paper wherever possible.

The Foundation’s own framework is considerably more cautious.

Its March 2026 report focuses specifically on small-format flexible packaging in markets with high leakage rates, including products such as sachets, wrappers, small pouches and pillow bags.

These formats are particularly problematic because they are low value, difficult to collect and frequently used in markets where formal waste infrastructure is limited.

The Foundation’s strategy remains broader than substitution.

Where packaging can be eliminated, reduce it.

Where reuse works, pursue reuse.

Where plastic flexibles remain necessary, improve collection and recycling.

And where paper can provide a better alternative, develop it responsibly.

That nuance is important because paper itself creates trade-offs.

A paper structure can use more material.

It can require additional water and energy during production.

It depends on a responsibly managed fibre supply.

Coatings can reintroduce persistent plastic or problematic chemistry.

And paper that ends up in unmanaged landfill can generate methane as it decomposes.

So PaperFlex is not trying to prove that paper is environmentally superior by definition.

It is trying to determine where paper can genuinely perform better.

The technical problem begins with barrier

This is the first obstacle.

Untreated paper is poor at resisting:

water,

water vapour,

oil,

grease,

oxygen,

aroma,

and many household chemicals.

Flexible plastic structures solve these problems by combining polymers with different properties.

A conventional pouch might contain:

polyethylene for sealing,

polypropylene for stiffness or temperature resistance,

PET for mechanical strength and printability,

aluminium or metallization for barrier,

and adhesives holding those layers together.

Each layer has a purpose.

Simplifying that structure into paper means those functions do not disappear.

They have to be recreated somehow.

That is why coatings are central to PaperFlex.

The consortium specifically identifies biodegradable coatings and new coating technologies among the areas members intend to investigate collectively.

The real scientific question is not:

Can paper be coated?

It obviously can.

It is:

Can the coating provide plastic-like functionality without turning the paper back into a difficult composite?

That is much harder.

Sealing may be even more difficult than barrier

Paper has another disadvantage compared with thermoplastics.

It does not melt.

Plastic packaging machines commonly create seals by heating polymer surfaces until they bond.

That process can be extremely fast.

Paper needs a separate sealable layer or coating.

And that coating has to achieve several things simultaneously:

activate at the available temperature,

seal within milliseconds,

tolerate contamination at the seal area,

maintain package integrity through transport,

and still fit the intended recycling or biodegradation pathway.

For dry snacks, that is challenging.

For liquids such as shampoo or detergent, it becomes far more demanding.

Unilever specifically points to sealing as one of the hardest parts of replacing flexible plastic in products where the package has to contain liquids reliably.

That helps explain why the company’s existing paper launches are concentrated in applications where the barrier challenge is more manageable.

Knorr illustrates how far a “simple” wrapper can reach into the factory

Unilever’s Knorr stock-cube wrapper is a useful example.

The company moved the UK product from a multilayer aluminium-based wrapper toward a paper structure after extensive development work.

But the change did not stop at procurement.

Unilever had to modify factory equipment so the folded paper material could run reliably through existing production processes.

The wrappers were introduced after a retail pilot and rolled out more broadly in the UK.

That detail is more important than it first appears.

Changing the substrate changed the factory.

Paper behaves differently from flexible plastic or foil during:

unwinding,

folding,

tension control,

creasing,

transport,

and sealing.

This means paper substitution is not simply a material-science project.

It can require:

machine engineering,

controls changes,

tooling,

operator training,

quality validation,

and production-line trials.

That is exactly why PaperFlex intends to test how candidate materials perform on manufacturing equipment rather than limiting work to laboratory barrier data.

A material that works in the lab can still fail at 500 packs per minute

This distinction is fundamental.

Packaging laboratories typically measure things such as:

oxygen transmission rate,

water-vapour transmission rate,

grease resistance,

tensile strength,

seal strength,

and tear resistance.

Those metrics matter.

But commercial packaging equipment introduces another set of variables.

Can the web track correctly?

Will it wrinkle?

Does it tear during acceleration?

Can it survive repeated start-stop cycles?

Does it seal inside the same temperature window?

Does the coating block while the roll is stored?

Does the material create dust?

Can it run at the same speed as the existing plastic?

How much startup scrap does it create?

A substrate that passes every laboratory test can still be commercially unattractive if the filling line has to slow by 20%.

That is why PaperFlex is as much about manufacturing economics as materials science.

Cost remains a major barrier

Paper alternatives also have to compete with one of the most mature material systems in packaging.

Flexible plastic manufacturing benefits from enormous global scale.

Resin production is highly optimized.

Film extrusion is fast.

Printing and laminating infrastructure is established.

Supply chains are mature.

Machines have been optimized around the material for decades.

Emerging paper flexibles do not yet enjoy the same economics.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has estimated that currently available home-compostable paper-based flexible options can cost roughly two to six times more than their plastic equivalents, depending on application and technology.

That is not a small premium.

It explains why shared R&D may have economic value beyond simply exchanging technical knowledge.

Six multinational customers can create a larger potential market for coating suppliers, machine companies and material developers.

That makes it easier for an innovation provider to justify:

pilot capacity,

coating development,

new converting equipment,

and ultimately commercial production.

The consortium is therefore partly a demand-aggregation mechanism.

Scale may matter as much as scientific discovery

The packaging industry often assumes the missing ingredient is a breakthrough material.

Sometimes the technology already exists.

What is missing is enough volume to reduce its cost.

A supplier may have a technically viable barrier formulation but only produce small batches.

A specialist paper grade may work but lack sufficient demand to justify a dedicated machine campaign.

An adhesive may perform well but remain expensive because commercial volumes are tiny.

In that environment, six major FMCG companies working toward similar technical requirements can change the investment equation.

If several members eventually need similar:

high-barrier papers,

heat-seal coatings,

biodegradable adhesives,

or paper-converting technology,

suppliers can see a larger addressable market.

That is one of the reasons the Foundation argues that economies of scale are essential to closing the current gap.

The consortium is also trying to stop six companies solving the same problem six times

This may be the most practical benefit.

Unilever alone says its packaging scientists have already assessed more than 3,000 emerging materials and technologies, particularly potential barrier technologies for flexible packaging.

Mars has its own packaging teams and has already tested recyclable paper wrappers on products including KIND bars, Mars bars, Snickers and Milky Way.

Nestlé has its own Institute of Packaging Sciences and says it is developing high-barrier paper packaging with external partners.

P&G, PepsiCo and Colgate-Palmolive also maintain large packaging-development organizations.

Without coordination, each company could independently screen:

the same coating supplier,

the same paper,

the same adhesive,

and the same converting concept.

Then each could independently discover the same failure.

That duplication is expensive.

PaperFlex creates a mechanism for sharing some of that pre-competitive learning.

A technology that does not survive humid storage, for example, does not need to fail independently inside six R&D departments before the market learns the lesson.

Failure data could be as valuable as success

This is an underrated part of collaborative R&D.

Companies like publishing successful pilots.

They rarely publicize materials that failed.

But packaging innovation produces large amounts of negative knowledge.

Coating A cracks during folding.

Coating B provides oxygen barrier but blocks during roll storage.

Paper C seals well but tears at industrial speed.

Adhesive D performs well but interferes with repulping.

Material E works in Europe but becomes brittle in tropical humidity.

Every failed trial contains useful information.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation explicitly says PaperFlex is intended to share learning from both successful and unsuccessful development work.

That could materially shorten the development cycle.

Sometimes the fastest innovation is simply avoiding the same dead end twice.

The members still have to remain competitors

There is an important limit to collaboration.

Colgate-Palmolive.

Mars.

Nestlé.

PepsiCo.

P&G.

Unilever.

These companies compete across numerous consumer categories.

They cannot coordinate commercial packaging strategy as though they were one purchasing organization.

The consortium therefore emphasizes that participation is voluntary, members continue making packaging decisions independently, and collaboration operates with legal oversight and defined guardrails.

That means PaperFlex should be viewed as pre-competitive R&D, not coordinated market behavior.

Members can collaborate on questions such as:

Can this chemistry biodegrade?

Can this coating provide enough barrier?

Can this paper run on high-speed equipment?

What test method should be used?

But individual companies still decide independently:

which supplier to use,

which package to launch,

what volume to purchase,

and where to deploy it.

That structure is essential if consortium R&D is going to influence a large market while preserving competition.

PaperFlex also exposes a weakness in the phrase “paper is recyclable”

Paper has an enormous structural advantage.

It already has one of the world’s most established material-recovery systems.

But a flexible paper wrapper is not automatically equivalent to a corrugated box.

Thin paper can be difficult to sort.

Small formats may fall through screens.

Food residues can interfere with collection.

Barrier coatings can reduce fibre recovery.

And local systems differ substantially.

The Foundation’s 2026 framework therefore does not merely require paper flexibles to be technically recyclable.

One of its six criteria is that they should be recyclable locally.

That is a higher bar.

A technically repulpable wrapper is not circular if consumers have nowhere to put it.

This becomes particularly important because PaperFlex targets weak collection markets

The geographic focus creates an apparent contradiction.

PaperFlex is particularly interested in markets where formal flexible-plastic collection is limited.

But those same markets may also lack robust paper collection.

Simply changing the substrate does not create the recycling system.

The Foundation acknowledges this directly.

Paper substitution needs to be accompanied by improvements in collection and recycling, including systems that recognize the role of informal waste pickers in many high-leakage economies.

This is why the consortium’s dual end-of-life objective matters.

The preferred route is recycling.

Biodegradability is intended as a fallback characteristic if material unintentionally leaks into the environment.

It is not permission to litter.

Biodegradable is a much harder claim than paper-based

This is another area where terminology needs precision.

The interview describes paper as widely recyclable and compostable.

As a broad substrate comparison, paper has important advantages.

But individual paper packages are not automatically compostable or biodegradable under every condition.

The Foundation itself warns that polymer coatings and chemical components can fail to biodegrade and can still create persistent pollution or chemical risk.

This is particularly relevant for high-performance flexible packaging.

The more functionality added to paper, the harder it can become to preserve the environmental behavior that made paper attractive in the first place.

A thin plastic barrier can solve:

grease,

water,

oxygen,

and heat-seal problems.

But if that layer remains persistent after the fibre degrades, the package has not solved the leakage problem PaperFlex is designed to address.

The consortium is therefore pursuing an unusually difficult combination:

barrier performance during use, but benign behavior after unintended environmental leakage.

Those requirements naturally pull material design in opposite directions.

The perfect barrier is designed not to degrade

This is the fundamental contradiction.

A package coating is expected to survive:

humidity,

temperature changes,

abrasion,

product contact,

transport,

and months of shelf life.

In other words, packaging engineers deliberately design it to resist environmental conditions.

Biodegradability asks that same material to become vulnerable after disposal.

The engineering challenge is creating a trigger between those two states.

Stable during use.

Degradable afterwards.

That could depend on:

microbial conditions,

moisture,

UV exposure,

temperature,

or chemistry.

Achieving that transition while retaining food-contact safety and industrial processability is not trivial.

That is why the Foundation says combining biodegradability, recyclability and packaging performance remains a major innovation challenge.

Fibre sourcing creates another constraint if paper succeeds

Suppose the consortium succeeds.

Billions of flexible plastic packages move toward paper.

That creates additional fibre demand.

Where does the pulp come from?

This is why responsible sourcing is the first of the Foundation’s six criteria.

Paper substitution can create unintended pressure through:

forest conversion,

biodiversity loss,

water use,

and increased demand for virgin fibre.

Mars explicitly acknowledges this risk in its own packaging strategy, noting that paper alternatives require careful fibre sourcing and can also carry disadvantages in water use and transport efficiency relative to lightweight plastic.

This means PaperFlex cannot optimize only for packaging performance.

It also has to consider the scale of the fibre system supporting it.

Recycled fibre will not solve every flexible application

It might seem logical to answer the sourcing problem with recycled paper.

That helps in some applications.

But high-performance flexible paper often requires demanding surface and strength properties.

Packaging may need:

excellent formation,

low porosity,

high tensile strength,

clean surfaces,

uniform coating holdout,

and predictable tear behavior.

Recycled fibre can sometimes meet those requirements.

In other cases, virgin fibre may still be technically preferable.

Food-contact requirements can create another constraint depending on the application and regulatory regime.

So the fibre-sourcing strategy will likely differ by format.

The consortium’s framework is therefore more realistic than a universal requirement for one feedstock.

The goal is responsible sourcing and reduced environmental impact, not simply maximizing recycled content regardless of performance.

The existing pilots show how application-specific this will be

Mars provides a useful example.

Its KIND brand launched a curbside-recyclable paper wrapper pilot in the U.S. in 2025 after an earlier e-commerce trial.

Mars said the first pilot provided data on:

shelf life,

transit performance,

machinability,

and consumer response.

Those lessons then informed the later retail trial.

Mars has also used paper wrappers for confectionery in Australia and New Zealand.

Unilever’s Knorr project tackles a different challenge.

Stock cubes contain significant fat, so the wrapper needs grease resistance while still folding tightly around a small product.

Different product.

Different barrier.

Different machine.

Different solution.

That is why Pablo Costa’s statement that there is no one-size-fits-all solution is probably the most important part of Unilever’s explanation.

PaperFlex may develop technology platforms.

It is unlikely to produce one universal paper film.

Bathroom humidity shows how specific the problem becomes

Unilever gives a particularly useful example.

A flexible package used for soap in a humid bathroom faces a very different environment from a confectionery wrapper stored in a dry cupboard.

Paper absorbs moisture.

Humidity can affect:

stiffness,

tensile properties,

dimensional stability,

coating adhesion,

and seal integrity.

So a structure that works perfectly for a dry-food wrapper may fail in personal care.

Likewise, a shampoo refill pouch faces long-term liquid contact that a snack wrapper never encounters.

This suggests PaperFlex will have to develop a portfolio of technologies, not one material.

Some may target dry foods.

Others personal care.

Others household cleaning.

Others confectionery.

The common R&D can solve platform-level problems while individual brands adapt the technology to their products.

Unilever is signaling that this is no longer experimental R&D

There is another reason the consortium deserves attention.

Unilever has connected paper-flexible development to its corporate performance targets.

Its 2025 annual report introduced a 2026–2028 incentive metric aimed at launching between 7.4 and 13.7 thousand tonnes of new paper-based flexible packaging by 2028.

That does not represent the whole PaperFlex consortium.

It is Unilever’s own objective.

But it shows that the company is trying to move paper flexibles from pilot projects into measurable commercial tonnage.

Unilever also says it has already evaluated more than 3,000 emerging packaging materials and technologies.

This is no longer a question of whether one interesting paper wrapper can be demonstrated.

The challenge is converting R&D into thousands of tonnes of repeatable packaging production.

Scaling introduces a different set of problems

A pilot roll can be made carefully.

Commercial packaging requires:

consistent pulp,

consistent coating,

consistent thickness,

consistent moisture,

consistent seal behavior,

and consistent machine performance.

That consistency has to survive production across:

different paper mills,

different coating lines,

different converters,

different countries,

and different filling factories.

A multinational FMCG company may need the same packaging concept in several regions.

Now supplier qualification becomes critical.

If one paper mill can make the material but cannot supply global demand, another producer has to reproduce it.

If a coating relies on one specialty chemical with limited capacity, scaling can stall.

This is where shared specifications and shared test methods can become more valuable than another laboratory breakthrough.

PaperFlex could indirectly accelerate standardization

One potential long-term benefit of the consortium is technical alignment.

Today different brands may test paper flexibles using different methods.

One company prioritizes oxygen barrier.

Another specifies different seal tests.

A third uses a different repulpability protocol.

Suppliers then face multiple qualification processes for essentially similar applications.

A consortium involving six large buyers can potentially create more common expectations around:

barrier testing,

machinability,

biodegradation,

recycling compatibility,

and chemical safety.

The consortium has not announced a universal industry specification.

So it would be premature to say that standardization will occur.

But shared trials can naturally move the market toward more comparable data.

That reduces friction for suppliers.

Regulation adds urgency, but PaperFlex should not be reduced to a PPWR project

Packaging regulation is clearly part of the commercial backdrop.

The EU PPWR is increasing pressure around:

recyclability,

packaging minimization,

substances of concern,

and EPR.

Other jurisdictions are introducing EPR and recycled-content systems.

But PaperFlex’s stated focus is broader and geographically different.

It particularly targets markets where flexible plastic leakage is high because collection and recycling systems are weak.

That means the consortium should not simply be described as six companies trying to comply with PPWR.

Its central problem is global flexible-packaging pollution.

European regulation may strengthen the business case.

It is not the only reason the programme exists.

Flexible plastic still has one enormous advantage: material efficiency

This is another issue the paper industry has to confront directly.

Flexible packaging uses remarkably little material.

That is one reason it became ubiquitous.

Replacing a 2-gram plastic wrapper with a 5-gram or 8-gram paper structure changes several environmental variables.

More material is manufactured.

More mass is shipped.

More storage volume may be required.

Additional coating may be needed.

That does not automatically mean paper is worse.

End-of-life leakage can matter enormously, particularly where plastic pollution is severe.

But comparisons need to use the complete system.

The Foundation’s six criteria explicitly require paper solutions to meet technical, economic and consumer needs while also being responsibly produced and sourced.

That is effectively a warning against optimizing only one metric.

The paper industry should pay attention to what the consortium asks suppliers to develop

For paper producers, PaperFlex could create new demand.

But not necessarily for ordinary packaging grades.

The required substrate may need a combination of:

high strength at low basis weight,

excellent formation,

good printability,

controlled porosity,

fold endurance,

low pinhole risk,

barrier-coating compatibility,

heat resistance,

and reliable high-speed runnability.

These are specialty-paper requirements.

If the market grows, mills capable of producing optimized flexible packaging base papers could gain a higher-value application.

But the substrate will have to work closely with:

coating suppliers,

converters,

adhesive developers,

printing companies,

and filling-equipment manufacturers.

The opportunity therefore sits across the entire paper value chain.

Coating suppliers may be the biggest beneficiaries of the R&D race

Much of the technical difficulty sits in the final few grams of chemistry.

A coating may determine whether paper can:

resist oxygen,

contain oil,

survive humidity,

or heat seal.

That makes barrier technology one of the most valuable development areas in fibre packaging.

The market is already seeing:

dispersion coatings,

bio-based polymers,

mineral barriers,

protein-based materials,

silica-derived layers,

and extremely thin deposition technologies.

Unilever says its R&D teams have looked outside conventional packaging into fields including pharmaceuticals and electronics for possible barrier technologies.

That is revealing.

The next successful paper-packaging coating may not originate in the paper industry.

But adding a coating can solve one problem and recreate another

This is where every new technology needs scrutiny.

Suppose a coating gives paper excellent oxygen barrier.

Can the mill repulp it?

Suppose it biodegrades.

Does it provide six months of shelf life?

Suppose it does both.

Can it run at industrial coating speed?

Suppose it does that too.

Can the finished roll be stored without blocking?

Can the brand afford it?

The innovation challenge is cumulative.

A material does not succeed because it solves one requirement.

It succeeds only when it clears all the requirements simultaneously.

This is why the Foundation’s six criteria function more like a series system than a scorecard.

Failure on one critical parameter can invalidate the solution.

Consumer behavior remains another unknown

Consumers also need to understand what to do with the pack.

A paper-like wrapper creates an intuitive expectation:

put it with paper.

That becomes problematic if the actual package requires industrial composting or another special route.

Conversely, if consumers mistakenly place a genuinely recyclable paper wrapper in general waste because it feels like plastic, the recycling benefit is lost.

Early commercial launches such as Knorr and KIND provide an opportunity to study exactly these responses.

This makes pilots valuable even when their initial volume is small.

They test the human system, not just the material.

PaperFlex may matter most if it makes failures cheaper

Collaborative R&D is often described as a way to produce breakthroughs faster.

There is another benefit.

It can lower the cost of being wrong.

If one company spends several million dollars developing a coating that fails, that investment produces little commercial value.

If six companies jointly support early-stage trials, development risk can be spread across a larger potential market.

Suppliers also gain more confidence that successful technologies will have multiple potential customers.

That changes the economics of experimentation.

And paper-based flexibles still require a great deal of experimentation.

The consortium itself is evidence that the problem is not solved

This is perhaps the clearest conclusion.

If paper-based flexible packaging already offered:

plastic-level performance,

competitive cost,

high-speed runnability,

local recyclability,

reliable biodegradability,

and abundant sustainable fibre,

six global FMCG companies would not need a shared R&D consortium.

They would simply buy it.

The existence of PaperFlex is evidence of the opposite.

The market has promising solutions.

It does not yet have enough complete solutions.

That should temper some of the more enthusiastic claims surrounding plastic-to-paper substitution.

Paper flexibles are advancing.

They are not a drop-in replacement for flexible plastic across every category.

But the collaboration could change the speed of development

There is also a reason to take PaperFlex seriously.

These are not small packaging users.

Colgate-Palmolive, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, P&G and Unilever collectively place enormous volumes of flexible packaging into global markets.

Their demand can influence:

paper mills,

chemical suppliers,

converters,

machine makers,

and investors.

A shared signal from those customers tells the supply chain that there is potentially significant commercial demand for a paper structure capable of meeting the consortium’s requirements.

That can pull more R&D capital toward the problem.

The Foundation is also inviting additional FMCG companies, technology suppliers, innovators and investors to participate.

If enough demand aggregates around common performance requirements, technologies that currently look expensive and niche may begin to scale.

The real target is not paper that behaves like plastic

That phrase is often used to describe the challenge.

It is only partly correct.

If paper behaves exactly like plastic during use but also behaves exactly like plastic after disposal, the substitution has achieved very little.

The real target is more difficult.

PaperFlex wants a structure that behaves enough like plastic during the product lifecycle to protect the product and run on machines.

Then, after use, it needs to behave differently.

It should enter a viable paper recycling system where one exists.

And if it unintentionally escapes waste management in high-leakage markets, the structure should avoid creating persistent plastic pollution.

That combination is the innovation challenge.

Paper’s future in flexibles will be decided by the whole system

The next few years will produce plenty of announcements about new paper wrappers.

The more useful questions will be:

What coating does the package use?

How much?

What barrier does it achieve?

What shelf life does it deliver?

At what line speed?

At what reject rate?

How much does it cost versus the incumbent plastic?

Can local paper mills recycle it?

Has the complete package been tested for biodegradation?

Where does the fibre come from?

And can it be made in sufficient volume?

Those are harder questions than asking whether the wrapper is “paper-based.”

They are also what will determine whether PaperFlex becomes a meaningful industrial transition or another collection of pilots.

The consortium’s most important output may not be a package

It may be a common development pathway.

Shared tests.

Shared failure data.

Better supplier specifications.

More realistic recyclability expectations.

Greater clarity on biodegradation.

Common understanding of factory constraints.

And enough combined demand to move promising technology down the cost curve.

That would be significant even if the six companies never adopt exactly the same paper structure.

Because the hardest part of replacing flexible plastic is not inventing another piece of paper packaging.

It is creating an ecosystem capable of repeatedly producing paper structures that satisfy all the requirements flexible plastic already satisfies.

That is what PaperFlex is trying to build.

And that may explain why some of the world’s largest competitors in consumer goods have decided that this particular piece of packaging innovation is better solved together.

Last Updated on 17/09/2026 by Jota Machinery