Packaging

Topac, a BPG subsidiary, named innovation champion

Thursday 25. June 2020 - Letting go of the old and daring to try something new: Innovative medium-sized companies such as the BPG subsidiary Topac are not afraid of change, but see it as an opportunity. With exactly this attitude and equally creative and sustainable packaging solutions, the Gütersloh-based company has now convinced the jury in the 27th round of the renowned TOP 100 innovation competition.

Since June 19, Topac has officially been part of the illustrious circle of innovative companies that are allowed to carry the TOP 100 seal. In the scientific selection process, the company impressed in size class B (51 to 200 employees) especially in the category ‘Innovative Processes and Organisation’. “We are very pleased about this award and take it as an incentive to continue on the path we have taken and to continue to turn creative ideas into innovative products in the future,” says Topac Managing Director Sven Deutschmann.
As a specialist for print products and carton packaging, Topac now focuses on the development of sustainable packaging solutions for the food industry. While the core business used to consist almost exclusively of packaging for records and other sound carriers, the TOP 100 company has been focusing on diversification for several years now. First, the Gütersloh-based company introduced sustainable packaging for cosmetics and SIM cards to the market. “We have now transferred this innovative competence to the food industry,” explains Deutschmann and continues: “Everyone wants to avoid plastic. But in the supermarket, meat in particular is often packed in black plastic trays. Given the high proportion of color pigments, these cannot be recycled at all, they can only be incinerated.
Together with the Italian specialty machinery manufacturer Mondini, the top innovator developed an alternative in 2019: cardboard packaging covered with a particularly thin, recyclable plastic film. This coating is easy to peel off and can be put into the yellow sack, the cardboard is put into the waste paper. “This can reduce the use of plastics by up to 70 percent,” explains Co-Managing Director Jörg Dickenhorst.
But the packaging experts from Gütersloh are still on the move with innovative special products for sound carriers in their core segment. A current example from this area is Leonard Cohen’s last studio album “Thanks for the Dance”. The album is made of high-quality black through-dyed cardboard, which has been refined with a special gold foil in a complex process and under the most careful processing to give the end product an individual and valuable identity through the packaging.