Sabert Europe consolidates 800-SKU packaging portfolio

Sabert Corporation Europe has brought more than 800 food-packaging SKUs into its largest portfolio to date, consolidating products and material capabilities following the integration of Colpac and continued development across pulp, paperboard, plastic, and food-to-go formats.

The new catalogue is available in print and digital formats in English, French, and German and is aimed at foodservice operators, retailers, processors, and food-to-go businesses. Its significance lies less in the publication itself than in the breadth of the combined offer now being presented through one European organisation after Sabert’s acquisition of Colpac.

Colpac added established UK paperboard manufacturing and converting capability to Sabert’s existing European business, while subsequent product development has expanded the group’s fibre-based and plastic ranges. The catalogue now brings those lines together with hot and cold food containers, custom branding options, and modified atmosphere packaging applications for industrial food production.

Alex Noake, senior vice president and managing director for Sabert Europe, said the acquisition and subsequent portfolio development meant the company could offer customers “a far more complete packaging solution than ever before”. The business is positioning broader sourcing from one supplier as one of the main commercial benefits of the integration.

Food-packaging specification extends well beyond material choice. Packs have to match filling and sealing equipment, line speeds, product temperature, barrier requirements, shelf-life targets, coding, case packing, transport, retail presentation, and end-of-life expectations. A supplier able to work across several material families has more scope to compare those requirements without forcing every application towards one substrate.

Sabert’s current offer spans pulp, paperboard, recyclable plastics, hot and cold food containers, food-to-go formats, and reusable solutions. The addition of Colpac strengthens the paperboard side of that mix, while Pulp Ultra extends Sabert’s fibre-based offer in the UK. The company is also highlighting modified atmosphere packaging capability for industrial food applications, where the pack forms part of the shelf-life system rather than serving only as a container.

MAP applications make the technical demands particularly clear. Gas composition can help slow deterioration, but performance depends on the complete packaging system, including tray rigidity, film compatibility, seal integrity, barrier properties, product characteristics, headspace, and temperature control. A processor changing tray or film specification has to consider how the new pack behaves on denesting, filling, gas flushing, sealing, inspection, and downstream handling equipment.

Andrew Grimbaldeston, marketing and innovation director at Sabert, said having expertise across pulp, plastic, and paperboard under one organisation was a differentiator because the company could assess “the strengths and limitations of each material”. Material substitution in food packaging is rarely a straightforward exchange between two formats once production performance is included in the specification.

Manufacturers increasingly have to balance recyclability, material reduction, carbon targets, product protection, and production efficiency at the same time. A lighter or fibre-based pack offers little practical benefit if it reduces line speed, compromises seals, shortens shelf life, or increases product waste. A technically robust format can equally become commercially unattractive if it creates unnecessary material use or falls outside a customer’s packaging policy.

Bringing more than 800 SKUs into one portfolio could simplify procurement where businesses currently manage several packaging suppliers across product families or production sites. Common commercial contacts, technical data, sampling, forecasting, and specification processes can reduce administrative duplication, while a wider material base can allow new packs to be developed without immediately moving to another supplier.

The same scale creates its own complexity. An enlarged catalogue is useful only if engineers, procurement teams, and product developers can narrow the range quickly to formats that match filling equipment, product characteristics, supply-chain conditions, and sustainability requirements. Without that technical filtering, additional choice simply moves complexity from the supplier market into the customer’s specification process.

Sabert is presenting its materials knowledge as the mechanism for avoiding that outcome. Noake said the business now had “the people, knowledge, technology and scale to help customers simplify sourcing, accelerate innovation and support their growth”. The claim will ultimately be tested by how consistently that expertise is applied across sites, product groups, and customer development projects.

The timing gives Sabert an immediate platform to put the combined proposition in front of buyers. The company will exhibit at London Packaging Week at ExCeL London on 16 and 17 September, where its expanded portfolio and recent product development will form part of the presentation.

The integration has therefore moved into a more practical phase. Colpac is no longer being presented simply as an additional business inside the group; its paperboard capability is being combined with Sabert’s existing materials, product development, and European commercial structure. The catalogue is the visible expression of that work, while the more useful measure will be whether customers experience a genuinely integrated technical offer.

That requires fewer disconnected conversations between packaging format, material performance, line compatibility, and sustainability objectives. Sabert now has the breadth to compete for a larger share of those decisions. The harder task is making an 800-plus-SKU portfolio feel simpler on the factory floor than the fragmented sourcing model it is intended to replace.