With their pioneering Meesters Van De Halm brand, De Halm b.v. can arguably be called one of the founders of the production of organic grains, cereal flakes and mueslis in Holland. The company’s grain crushing plant – Graanpletterij De Halm – was established in 1977 to process organic grains that were grown on Dutch soil.
The farmers that supply De Halm grow their grains using only environmentally friendly methods, which means that the farmers do not use any synthetic chemical pesticides, insecticides or artificial fertilizers.
Circular economy thinking means compostable packaging
At De Halm sustainable and sustainability means thinking about the future. “So that the children of our children could have as much as us, and enjoy the benefit of Mother Earth,” said Rob van den Berg of De Halm.
In striving to reduce plastic waste, De Halm separates their waste stream in production into green waste and normal plastic waste, and have also recently introduced compostable packages from TIPA. For De Halm compostable packaging was not just the logical next step in their sustainability journey, but also one which would distinguish them from their competitors. “In the case of our products, sustainability means organic, in the case of our packaging this means using renewable and compostable materials. We are living in a circular economy, so our packaging must contribute to that,” van den Berg said.
Products need packaging
“We work very closely with Bio4pack, they came to us with a laminate solution with TIPA compostable film packaging,” explained van den Berg of how the company had been introduced to TIPA packaging. “The transparency and the machinability of the Bio4pack Laminate was particularly appealing – more transparent than starch-based film.” Being able to see the product was also important. “The most important is our product rather than the packaging. Our products need packaging, it is not the other way around,” said van den Berg.
Achieving economies of scale
“We hope that other packers will follow soon and we could achieve an economic of scale, as the packaging is rather expensive compared to conventional film,” van den Berg concluded.
If you want to learn more about how TIPA can help you get biodegradable and compostable packaging for your business, you are welcome to contact us here. We will get back to you shortly!