Greif advances barrier packaging compliance at interpack

Greif has showcased a barrier packaging portfolio at interpack 2026, targeting food and beverage manufacturers facing tighter performance, supply-chain, and regulatory demands.

The company presented barrier technologies including IMB, EcoEx, and Plasma SiOx, with the systems designed for applications where product protection, shelf life, and regulatory transition planning have to be managed together. Greif positioned the technologies as commercial-scale options rather than early development concepts, with emphasis on performance, packaging transition, and customer support.

Alongside the material technologies, Greif highlighted digital and compliance tools including its Green Tool lifecycle assessment platform and Greif+ customer portal. The Green Tool allows customers to calculate the environmental footprint of packaging bought from the company, while Greif+ gives access to ordering, specification sheets, regulatory documents, shipment tracking, and packaging advice.

That combination reflects the changing nature of food and beverage packaging decisions. Barrier performance remains fundamental, especially where products are sensitive to oxygen, moisture, aroma migration, grease, contamination, or shelf-life loss. But packaging is increasingly judged through a wider evidence chain covering recyclability, reuse potential, recycled content, carbon footprint, sourcing risk, compliance records, and documentation availability.

Manufacturers are now being asked to make packaging choices that satisfy several competing pressures at once. A pack that protects food well may be difficult to recycle, while a simpler structure may perform better in end-of-life terms but create risk around product protection, sealing, shelf life, or line efficiency. The balance between food waste prevention and packaging reduction is becoming harder to manage as regulation accelerates.

Greif’s focus on local manufacturing adds another layer to the proposition. Packaging supply has been exposed to resin volatility, converter capacity pressure, freight disruption, energy costs, and shifting customer expectations. Regional manufacturing can reduce some supply exposure, but only when supported by technical consistency and documentation strong enough for multinational customers.

The same system-wide approach is visible across other recent packaging developments. Amcor, Metsä Group, and G Mondini’s fibre tray system for chilled foods linked material choice, barrier performance, lidding, and machinery integration rather than treating the tray as a standalone substrate. Michelman’s paper barrier coating launch similarly focused on recyclable and compostable structures that still have to run on vertical form-fill-seal lines.

Greif’s interpack portfolio sits in the same direction. Packaging suppliers are being pulled beyond the sale of drums, containers, coatings, liners, films, or barrier layers. They are increasingly expected to provide evidence, documentation, regulatory interpretation, customer portals, lifecycle calculations, and transition support.

The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is intensifying that requirement. Food businesses may understand the direction of travel around recycling, reuse, and packaging reduction, but they still need packs that pass customer approval, protect product quality, run on existing filling systems, and avoid shifting waste from packaging into spoiled food.

That operational balance will shape how quickly new barrier structures are adopted. A packaging change that improves compliance but causes sealing failures, shelf-life losses, line stoppages, or distribution damage will struggle to survive beyond trial phase. Conversely, a pack that combines regulatory evidence with reliable production performance will be far easier to justify.

Barrier packaging is therefore becoming both a material and data problem. The pack still has to do the physical work, but the decision to use it increasingly depends on the evidence, tools, and documentation that sit behind it. Greif’s interpack showcase places that evidence layer at the centre of the packaging offer.