CIPO, Peter Ekwall, continously harvests new innovations together with PulPac's engineers to push the Dry Molded Fiber technology forward and speed up the transition to sustainable fiber-based alternatives and away from single-use plastics.
With one new patent application filed last week, and one more patent granted in Japan, PulPac continues to expand the Dry Molded Fiber patent portfolio. The new grant and application both cover Dry Molded Fiber bottles, an exciting application that has already been produced on a lab scale.
Dry Molded Fiber is invented, patented, and licensed to packaging manufacturers by PulPac. The game-changing technology is up to ten times faster than traditional fiber forming methods and offers highly competitive unit economics. In addition, it saves significant amounts of valuable water and energy, resulting in up to 80% lower CO2 footprint compared to alternatives.
The granted patent in Japan covers both bottle-forming and more traditional single use objects traditionally made by plastics and wet forming. It is a divisional application from an earlier application granted in Japan. In short, the granted claims describe a cellulose blank containing less than 45 weight percent water being arranged and formed in a forming mould, using heat and isostatic pressure. Just as in other important jurisdictions, further divisional applications will be filed. The new patent application filed also covers manufacturing of bottles, but in a continuous manufacturing line.
“The world consumes massive amounts of plastic bottles, and they are a big contributor to plastic pollution. Only around 30-40% of all plastic bottles across the EU and US, are collected for recycling today. For paper and cardboard packaging, the average is about 80%. Even if our present focus is replacing the single-use products that are industrially ready, bottles are an interesting application for Dry Molded Fiber. We made the first bottles in our lab already in 2018 and some of our early patents are related to bottles,” says Peter Ekwall, CIPO
PulPac now holds 32 patent families with more than 150 granted national patents and plus 60 pending patent applications. New patent applications are filed continuously. In addition, PulPac has a substantive body of know-how and attached trade secrets that are shared within the Dry Molded Fiber network. Based on the core IP, PulPac has developed a complete technology platform covering multiple areas of fiber application manufacturing. All driven by the need of technical solutions for a greener, cleaner world.
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