Norwegian packaging firm Tommen Gram was faced with a unique challenge—help the Norwegian open sea fishing industry cut its costs through improved packaging.

Norwegian fishermen catch mackerel and herring and later freeze the whole fish or the fillets in large bags or boxes for shipping to Russia, the Ukraine and Asia. Despite huge volumes, Norway's pelagic industry was suffering financial losses in many years because of razor-thin profit margins. The industry needed a way to cut its costs—and its packaging-spend area made most sense.

As a packaging supplier, Tommen Gram took the challenge and looked to partner with one of its own material suppliers, the Vienna-based Borealis Group, to develop a new type of resin that could produce an improved packaging compound and reduce costs to the fishing industry.

Tommen Gram is one of Norway's oldest manufacturers of blown polyethylene materials for buyers in the food packaging, agriculture, construction and various other markets. The company sells 12,000 tons annually; 4,500 tons of which it produces itself, while the remainder is outsourced.

Collaborative research focused on polyethylene and polypropylene, says Rolf Draverg, Tommen Gram's managing director. Working together, the two companies created a polyolefin for film-based vacuum forming packaging. Borealis handled the bulk of the development for the product, while Tommen Gram evaluated its performance, aesthetics and the environmental requirements.

The final result was a product Borealis calls BorForm which Tommen Gram markets as GramFlex. Borealis gets credit for much of the development, while Tommen Gram is responsible testing new generations of the raw materials. The packaging is a combination of polyolefin, polyethylene and polypropylene.

Draverg estimates a 50% cost savings with GramFlex—it costs roughly 60¢ per 20-Kg package, compared with $1.20 for a carbon box. Food also freezes in half the time with GramFlex compared to a carbon box.

Environmentally, waste is minimized with the use of GramFlex and recycling is an option. "In the European countries, you pay dues for each kilo to recycle," Draverg tells Purchasing. "The polyethylene is more environmentally friendly, because you can recycle the material to new resins by collecting it and heating it again."

The company has sold approximately 500 tons and hopes to increase that total to 1,000 to 2,000 tons in 2007 or 2008. Currently, it sells GramFlex to the fish packaging industry in Norway and Shetland Island in the U.K. The next step is to market the packaging to neighboring European countries and the U.S.

Draverg notes that product development is very important, especially in a market such as Tommen Gram's, where packaging products are not on "the high end" of manufacturing. "We have a great effort in trying to do some new things, launch new generations of materials and test new raw materials, especially with Borealis," he added. "We also have similar development with Norwegian research centers, where we have two or three project going on constantly."

But collaborating with customers is nothing new for Borealis, which also recently collaborated with Kaller Kunststoff Technik (KKT) to help the Germany-based company produce better plastic bottles for the food, beverage, cosmetics, and paint industries. KKT selected a biaxially oriented polypropylene grade from Borealis to manufacture injection stretch blow molded (ISBM) bottles for water-based paint.

By using this grade of polypropylene, KKT was looking for a competitive advantage in a market which traditionally is dominated by extrusion blow-molded, high-density polyethylene-based bottles.

"Because we have a good working relationship with Borealis in standard polypropylene and high-density polyethylene, we though it was the right choice," says Arno Caspers, key account manager at KKT who was key in fostering the buyer/supplier collaboration. "We knew the material, because they introduced it to us before we started this project, and the behavior of the material, which we tested, worked best."

Borealis' biaxial orientation of the polypropylene stiffens the material to produce bottles with greater impact resistance from those made by extrusion blow molding. For paint packaging, the attribute enhanced bottle strength and protects the contents during shipping and storage.

KKT has seen its production costs decline since making the switch to biaxially oriented polypropylene. Almost half as much air pressure is needed in the manufacturing process, resulting in what Caspers describes as a "big difference in energy" demand.

Biaxially oriented polypropylene bottles also weigh 30% less than extrusion-blown polyethylene bottles, reducing the amount of waste and making them more environmentally friendly. "Every gram of the weight is used in the (biaxially oriented polypropylene) bottle," Caspers adds.

KKT is now working with Borealis to develop the next-generation of the material. KKT's focus is in two areas, one of which is to improve the production process.

"It looks like an easy bottle to make, because it is a straight surface, but this is the most difficult thing in blowing polypropylene," says Caspers. The other objective is to use less heat in production. KKT's testing of the new generation of the material was scheduled to take place in early February.

Beyond that, Borealis and KKT will be expanding the use of the bottle to the food and beverage market. Caspers said the heat resistance, strength and flexibility of the material in different temperatures make it very promising in this area.