EVANSVILLE, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE: BERY) is pleased to announce its participation in the new recycling initiative, HolyGrail 2.0. The outcome of its predecessor, the Pioneer Project HolyGrail, led by Gian De Belder at Proctor & Gamble, was the identification of digital watermarking (specifically, Digimarc Barcode) as a promising technique to “tag” plastic substrates or print materials (shrink sleeve, IML label, or paper label) with an identity that could include attributes such as plastic type, product manufacturer, product SKU, food or non-food usage, and composition of multi-layer foils. Digimarc Barcode can be added to the printed label/sleeve artwork and/or embossed into the plastic itself.
Berry will manufacture plastic packaging containing Digimarc Barcode for use in product sortation. The two companies are long-time partners, and Digimarc will advise Berry on adding the digital watermark onto drink cups and thin wall lids for containers as part of the project. “We continue to be amazed at the possibilities that Digimarc brings to us and our customers. It is exciting to see decoration have the potential to make such a positive impact on the recovery of plastics,” said Jennye Scott, Vice President of Creative Services for Berry.
In addition to its work with advancing recycling, Berry made an announcement in June to which it has become an official signatory of the Ellen MacArthur New Plastics Economy Global Commitment. As part of the Global Commitment, Berry has made a pledge for all of their plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by the year 2025. In line with the Company’s sustainability strategy, Impact 2025, Berry is striving to increase the recovery of plastics through recycling. The Company’s hope is to accelerate the efforts toward a circular economy by pushing the boundaries of innovation in both material recovery and recyclable packaging.
The first scheduled test is at TOMRA Sorting’s facility in Mülheim-Kärlich, Germany, on October 22, 2019, during the K-2019 Show (Dusseldorf). A shuttle bus will be provided to interested parties from the K-2019 Show to the TOMRA facility. Packaging professionals, plastics industry service providers, trade association members, and those attending the K-2019 show are encouraged to register and attend: https://solutions.tomra.com/holy-grail-2.0%20
About Berry
Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE: BERY), headquartered in Evansville, Indiana, is committed to its mission of ‘Always Advancing to Protect What’s Important,’ and proudly partners with its customers to provide them with value-added protective solutions that are increasingly light-weighted and easier to recycle or reuse. The Company is a leading global supplier of a broad range of innovative rigid, flexible, and nonwoven products used every day within consumer and industrial end markets. Berry, a Fortune 500 company, has over 48,000 employees and generated approximately $13 billion of sales in fiscal year 2018 on a combined pro forma basis from operations that span over 290 locations on six continents. For additional information, visit Berry’s website at berryglobal.com.
About Digimarc
Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC) is a pioneer in the automatic identification of everyday objects such as product packaging and virtually any media, including print, images and audio. The Digimarc Platform provides innovative and comprehensive automatic recognition technologies to simplify search, and transform information discovery through unparalleled reliability, efficiency and security. Digimarc has a global patent portfolio, which includes over 1,100 granted and pending patents. These innovations include state-of-the-art identification technology, Digimarc Barcode, as well as Digimarc Discover® software for barcode scanning, image recognition, as layers of its ground-breaking Platform. Digimarc is based in Beaverton, Oregon. The Digimarc Platform enables applications that benefit retailers and consumer brands, national and state government agencies, media and entertainment industries, and others. Visit digimarc.com and follow us @digimarc to learn more about The Barcode of Everything®.
