IN Brief:
- Tetra Pak Ice Cream Wrap contains up to 85% paper from FSC certified and controlled sources.
- The 53 gsm material is being tested on commercial ice cream lines including Triumf Glass in Sweden.
- A phased European rollout is planned during the fourth quarter of 2026.
Tetra Pak has introduced an ice cream wrapper containing up to 85% paper, with commercial production trials under way in Europe ahead of a phased rollout during the fourth quarter of 2026.
Ice Cream Wrap uses paper from FSC certified forests and other controlled sources alongside polymer, ink and lacquer layers required for sealing, protection and print. The remaining materials mean the structure is not plastic free, but paper accounts for the majority of its composition.
The wrapper has a basis weight of 53 grams per square metre and is being tested on commercial equipment, including lines operated by Swedish ice cream producer Triumf Glass. Production trials will establish whether the material feeds, seals and cuts consistently at the speeds required for routine manufacture.
Frozen products place unusual demands on a relatively light flexible wrapper. The material leaves the machine around a product already at low temperature, then has to tolerate cold storage, distribution, retail freezers and repeated handling without losing seal integrity or mechanical strength.
Moisture and temperature variation can also influence paper structures differently from conventional plastic films. The material therefore needs enough barrier and coating performance to protect the pack while retaining the stiffness, flexibility and sealing characteristics required by the wrapping machine.
Tetra Pak says testing between 2022 and 2026 found the 53 gsm material to be up to 50% thinner than selected paper alternatives used in its comparison. The result applies to that test set rather than every paper wrapper available, but it indicates the engineering aim behind the structure: increase fibre content without creating a heavy pack that disrupts existing production and logistics.
Thickness affects more than the amount of material used. A bulkier primary wrapper can increase the space occupied by each product after folding and sealing, reducing the number of ice creams that fit into an established carton or case and forcing changes further down the packing line.
Maintaining existing case counts avoids additional demand for corrugated packaging, pallet space and transport capacity. A primary packaging change that appears beneficial in isolation can lose part of that advantage if it forces fewer products into each secondary pack.
Compatibility with installed machinery is therefore central to the launch. Tetra Pak’s Multilane Wrapper equipment handles formats including sticks, bars, sandwiches and cones using continuous webs that are formed and sealed around individual products.
Web tension, registration, cutting and seal temperature all respond to the mechanical properties of the material being run. A paper structure that stretches, tears or curls differently from the existing film may require adjustments before it can achieve comparable production efficiency.
Triumf Glass provides a production environment in which those variables can be tested through normal operating conditions rather than short development runs. Reel changes, restarts, minor variations in product dimensions and sustained running speed can expose problems that are less obvious when a material is assessed only in a laboratory.
Primary pack performance also affects downstream automation. Ice creams commonly move directly from wrapping into collating, cartoning and case packing, so changes in thickness or rigidity can influence transfer between machines even if the wrapper itself forms correctly around the product.
Tetra Pak says the material is intended for selected systems in its own wrapping range, with potential use on some third party equipment where the machine and sealing conditions are compatible. That does not make the wrapper interchangeable across every installed line, because web paths, sealing technologies and operating speeds vary.
Recyclability will depend on local collection and processing infrastructure as well as paper content. Multilayer food packaging has to be accepted by the relevant recycling route, and fibre content alone does not determine whether the complete wrapper will be collected and processed in a particular market.
Tetra Pak has already pursued higher paper content in other parts of its packaging portfolio, particularly cartons, but flexible ice cream wrapping creates a different mechanical problem. The material has to bend tightly around small frozen products and seal at speed while remaining thin enough to preserve existing pack dimensions.
The European rollout will test whether those design choices survive sustained factory use. Paper content is the headline material change, but line efficiency, sealing consistency, start up waste and secondary packing performance will determine whether processors can replace existing wrappers without introducing new production losses elsewhere.
