cardboard

ICO, a leading company in the corrugated cardboard industry for the production of packaging and corrugated cardboard boxes in Italy, is today amongst the country's largest corrugated cardboard producers and a key reference point in the packaging market for central and southern Italy, as well as being amongst Europe's foremost companies for digital printing.

Some packages protect products with every fibre of their being. Cardboard is one of these. For cellulose-based material to remain usable in a sustainable manner, it must meet a series of requirements.

The strong focus on safeguarding and conserving consumable resources puts all aspects of packaging under scrutiny. Considerable attention is rightly being placed on limiting so-called overpackaging and adopting materials and processes throughout the entire supply chain that minimise environmental impact.

At EcoForum 2025, the national conference on the circular economy organised by Legambiente and held on 1–2 July 2025 at the Hotel Quirinale in Rome, the Food and Beverage Carton Alliance (FBCA), in partnership with Comieco, presented two special awards to plants that have stood out in the recovery of beverage and food cartons — exemplary cases of local circular economy best practices.

Fiat marks a significant turning point for the automotive industry and the circular economy: with the launch of the new Grande Panda, it becomes the first car manufacturer in the world to use recycled materials from beverage cartons inside a production vehicle.

Elopak, a global leader in sustainable packaging solutions, in collaboration with long-standing partner Orkla Home and Personal Care (OHPC) and materials science giant Dow, has launched a ground-breaking innovation: D-PAK cartons made with a unique blend of circular (recycled) and bio-circular (renewable) polyethylene polymers.

Sustainability in the food and beverage packaging sector takes a step forward with the launch of the Food and Beverage Carton Alliance (FBCA), an organisation formed through the merger of ACE (The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment) and EXTR:ACT.

Established in 1968, Tiber Pack SpA is an Italian company specialised in automatic solutions for end-of-line, which has focused on the research and development of cutting-edge solutions, able to respond to the continuously evolving needs of customers and the packaging market.

Berry Global has recently teamed up with Mondelēz International and LyondellBasell to incorporate 50% ISCC PLUS-certified circular plastic through advanced recycling technology, based on a mass balance approach, into the protective film liners for Triscuit Crackers packaging in the USA and Canada. This innovative packaging solution complements the existing outer box, made from 100% recycled paperboard with 35% post-consumer recycled content.

Davide Miserendino

“ICO has an interesting history: starting out in the 1950s as a small box factory, and then vertically integrating cardboard and paper production before finally arriving at the finished product with the addition of digital printing, is something really special".