Australian material science company, Great Wrap, based in Melbourne, launched the world's first Compostable Pallet Wrap, made with food waste, to combat the global reliance on petroleum-based pallet wrap and plastic pollution.
Great Wrap’s 10,000 sqm facility in Tullamarine is home to state-of-the-art machinery that will make 5,000 tonnes of compostable stretch wrap in 2023 and 20,000 tonnes by 2025, making them Australia’s most extensive stretch wrap manufacturer. This will significantly decrease the country’s need to import stretch wrap from other parts of the world.
Pallet wrap, the connector of all businesses, is critical to the global supply chain. In Australia alone, 100,000 tonnes of the wrap are sent to landfill each year, including cling, catering, silage, and pallet wrap. Unfortunately, only a few facilities can recycle petroleum-based pallet wrap, meaning more than 90 percent go to landfill.
Great Wrap is home compostable, and when composted and returned to the soil, it can decrease Australia’s carbon footprint by over 100,000 tonnes every year by lowering dependence on fossil fuels. This latest innovation can solve the plastic pollution problem as it can be composted or repurposed to create new materials and returned to the soil to add microbial value to agricultural land.
“We’ve completed commercial trials with major Australian retailers, food and beverage manufacturers and household name brands, and their feedback is consistent. We’re calling on all Australian business owners to switch because the high-quality product means the only shift is where they purchase it,” said Jordy Kay, Co-founder of Great Wrap. Great Wrap performs as well as petroleum-based pallet wrap.
The Co-Founder of Great Wrap explained that demand from the company significantly increased over the last three years from businesses far and wide. Kay elaborated that most enterprises use petroleum-based pallet wrap to send and receive goods as it is essential and unavoidable, a global concern that Great Wrap is attempting to solve.
Great Wrap's vision continues beyond creating a compostable, planet-friendly alternative to industrial plastic wrap. In addition to manufacturing Compostable Pallet Wrap, Great Wrap is working on its pallet wrap collection service.
