Computer hardware company HP has announced that it has acquired ‘CHOOSE Packaging’, a packaging development company and inventor of the only commercially available zero-plastic paper bottle in the world.
Paper-Based Bottles
Edinburgh-based CHOOSE Packaging’s paper-based bottles are made with naturally occurring, non-toxic materials and are an alternative to single-use PET packaging plastic bottles. The paper-based bottles can hold a wide variety of liquid products and the company aims to minimise plastic pollution by offering plastic-free alternatives to everyday products. The plastic-free bottles produced by CHOOSE don’t require fossil fuel derived ingredients like PET plastic bottles do and CHOOSE believes that their plastic-free bottles offer a viable alternative that can really help in the journey towards zero impact living.
Why?
HP’s Savi Baveja, Chief Strategy & Incubation Officer, says that the acquisition “is a great example of how we continue to strengthen our capabilities in attractive verticals like sustainable packaging while also driving progress against HP’s broader sustainability goals.”
HP also says that there are more than 150 million tons of single-use plastics produced each year and by integrating ‘CHOOSE Packaging’ into its Personalisation & 3D Printing business it can focus on scaling its technology. This will mean that HP can “expand and disrupt the market” with its new fibre-based, 100 per cent plastic-free packaging.
CHOOSE Packaging Says…
CHOOSE packaging clearly believes that HP’s global power and reach as a tech company will transfer to (and fit in well with) its ambitions to quickly establish itself as a serious contender in the $10 billion fibre-based sustainable packaging market. James Longcroft, founder and Managing Director of CHOOSE Packaging said of the acquisition by HP “HP’s world-class capabilities and expertise can help scale our impact at a global level. We are thrilled to join the HP team and couldn’t have chosen a better match in terms of our shared goals for business, technology, sustainability, and a values-oriented culture.”
Helps Big Drinks Companies Reach Their Environmental Goals
CHOOSE Packaging already works with several large global companies including Accolade Wines, one of the biggest wine companies in the world, Henkel, one of the world’s largest consumer and industrial goods companies, and Malibu Rum, the well-known Pernod Ricard brand. These companies are already aware of the huge demand for sustainable alternative packaging and can see how having HP on board can help them more quickly reach their own goals of reducing their use of plastics in favour of environmentally friendly alternatives.
What Does This Mean For Your Organisation?
For HP, this acquisition is a way to expand its reach into a huge new market and new green technologies that are going to become much more important in the future. For CHOOSE, HP appears have the core capabilities and global reach and power, as well as shared values that they’d been looking for. For drinks and other FMCG manufacturers, the plastic-free packaging offers a real opportunity to meet and to be seen by consumers to meet their own environmental targets and tackle the challenge of having a genuinely viable and flexible green packaging alternative. There is already demand among consumers for greener packaging in the products that they buy, and PET plastic bottles have been a particular concern. Much wider use of the CHOOSE packaging is, therefore, likely to be well-received by end users, thereby prompting more FMCG companies to adopt this packaging, or a similar alternative.