In response to the growing demand for sustainable solutions in currency printing, Covestro is introducing Autentium^®, an innovative polymeric printing substrate. Designed exclusively for currency printing applications like banknotes, Autentium^® combines cutting-edge anti-counterfeiting technology with a recyclable mono-material design.

"The launch of Autentium^® represents a significant breakthrough in currency printing, offering an innovative, recyclable polymeric substrate that excels in printability, durability and is more sustainable," says Daniel Hentschel, Global Segment Manager for ID & Security Printing at Covestro.

Key Features of Autentium^® include:

• Exceptional printability: It supports secure printing techniques such as intaglio and offset, enabling embossed structures and therefore tactile security features that differ from traditional paper and existing polymer substrates.
• No coatings or primers needed: Its secondary properties as a hot-melt adhesive contribute to superior ink adhesion without requiring additional primers or coatings, streamlining the printing process and improving durability.
• Water & Stain Resistance: The polymer absorbs only minimal moisture, which contributes to a low static charge, while at the same time being resistant to contamination.
• Advanced laser engraveability: It allows precise micro-engravings, providing advanced anti-counterfeiting measures and enhancing currency security.
   

As a single-polymer solution, Autentium^® is recyclable, addressing the demand for sustainable materials in banknote production. Its high tear propagation resistance and excellent ink adhesion contribute to extend the lifespan of printed currency and can help reducing the environmental impact and conserving resources.

Furthermore, its durable composition can translate into long-term costs savings by minimizing replacements, making it an ideal choice for governments and the public sector that prioritize security and environmental responsibility.

Meet Covestro at Intergraf Currency + Identity 2025 

Covestro will showcase Autentium^® and other advanced polymeric solutions at the Intergraf Currency + Identity 2025 trade show. Join us from March 5-7, 2025, at the Allianz MiCo, Milano, Italy. Visit us at booth 16 to discover how Autentium^® can redefine your security printing requirements and drive innovation in currency production.

Covestro’s CERTEVO^® revolutionizes security printing with several key features: It supports excellent printability via intaglio and offset processes, enabling embossing structures—surpassing traditional paper and enhancing security elements. Its hotmelt nature eliminates the need for coatings and primers, ensuring superior ink adhesion that simplifies printing and boosts durability. Additionally, advanced laser engravability allows precise micro-engravings, making counterfeiting efforts more challenging.

As a single-polymer composition, CERTEVO^® is recyclable, meeting the demand for sustainable security printing materials. Its high tear resistance and ink adhesion extend the lifecycle of printed items while conserving resources. CERTEVO® thereby addresses environmental concerns and meets evolving sustainability requirements in document production.

Furthermore, its durable composition lowers long-term costs by minimizing replacements, making it an ideal choice for governments and the public sector that prioritize security and environmental responsibility. 

Meet Covestro at TRUSTECH 2024

Covestro’s team will be present at the TRUSTECH trade show, held at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles - Pavilion 5.2, from December 3-5, 2024. We invite industry professionals and stakeholders to discuss with us at meeting room 8 and discover how CERTEVO^® and other advanced polymer materials can transform their security printing needs.

“Healthcare manufacturers are increasingly adopting sustainable materials to reduce their carbon footprint, and it is our goal to help customers reach their sustainability ambitions,” said Sam Shodi, Head of Specialty Films North America, Covestro.

According to Shodi, the Makrofol^® polycarbonate film provides the transparency, toughness and sterilization suitability needed for many medical applications an example of which is medical implant packaging. “This advancement meets the demands of our healthcare customers, where sustainable materials are crucial for reducing environmental impact while maintaining high quality and safety standards,” he concluded.

With the mass balance approach, bio-based or recycled raw materials are fed in at an early stage of raw material extraction and mathematically allocated to the finished products. This saves fossil raw materials and reduces CO₂ emissions, while the quality of the mass-balanced products remains identical to that of purely fossil-based products. With this drop-in solution, manufacturers can continue to use their proven formulations, equipment and processes.

ISCC is an internationally recognized sustainability certification for biomass and bioenergy. The standard covers all stages of the value chain and is used worldwide. Covestro has major sites across all regions that are ISCC PLUS certified. Among them are world-scale sites like Baytown, Texas; Leverkusen, Dormagen and Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany; Shanghai, China; Map Ta Phut, Thailand; and Antwerp, Belgium.

Customers can discover more about Covestro’s mass balance films and other premium material solutions, including how they support sustainability goals and drive advancements in medical devices, at the upcoming MEDICA 2024 and COMPAMED 2024 trade fairs, November 11-14 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Under this partnership, one of Covestro’s key roles is to provide more sustainable plastic solutions along with their carbon footprint data. Alibaba Cloud’s Energy Expert, an AI-driven sustainability platform, plays a crucial role in realizing the whole life cycle emission accounting from recycled materials to final consumer products leveraging digital technology such as blockchain. It also provides an end-to-end solution for industrial companies to measure and optimize their carbon footprint across their production lifecycle.

“As a materials manufacturer with a high focus on sustainable material innovation, Covestro is committed to driving circularity and climate neutrality. Our collaboration with Alibaba Cloud marks a significant milestone in our journey towards a circular and climate-neutral future,” says Lily Wang, Global Head of the Engineering Plastics Business Entity, at Covestro. “With our joint solutions, we are supporting our customers to improve their supply chain transparency while building trust among environmentally conscious consumers, thereby driving industries towards a greener future.”

“We are proud to partner with Covestro in pioneering sustainable solutions that drive positive environmental impact,” says William Xiong, Vice President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “By leveraging our advanced cloud infrastructure and expertise in sustainability technology, we are enabling value chain partners to trace materials with enhanced transparency and efficiency as well as to optimize their carbon footprint to achieve their sustainability target. This partnership exemplifies the transformative power of technology in creating a more sustainable future.”

The joint solutions offered by the two parties have already been implemented in the consumer goods sector. For example, Covestro collaborated with China’s leading beverage maker Nongfu Spring to recycle its 19-litre water barrels into post-consumer recycled polycarbonate. The material was then used by KACO, a niche stationary brand in China, to produce gel pens. Through Alibaba Cloud Energy Expert’s carbon emission accounting and digital tools, consumers can scan a QR code on the packaging of the pens to trace the origin of the material, see a detailed breakdown of the carbon footprint at each stage in the production chain and the number of carbon emission slashed compared to the virgin materials.

The latest innovation from Covestro provides a solution to meet these growing needs: a partially bio-based barrier coating resin, Decovery^® CQ 6010, which helps ‘close the loop’ for recyclable paper packaging.

Reducing waste by replacing PE and aluminum layers

Many packaged food products are sensitive to moisture, so controlling the moisture vapor transmission rate (MVTR) is critical to maintaining the quality of the food. To protect the product inside a package, paper and board food packaging is often laminated with polyethylene (PE) or aluminum. These materials limit the packaging’s recyclability, meaning it often ends up going to landfill or being incinerated. Covestro’s innovative barrier coating resin reduces waste by replacing these PE or aluminum layers in paper food packaging to make it recyclable.

By enabling low MVTR values, Decovery^® CQ 6010 provides a moisture barrier to protect the food, as well as delivering good oil and grease resistance. This makes it suitable for use in packaging for a wide range of food, from dry high-fat products such as chocolate bars to ice cream, frozen food, and fresh fruit. The resin is made with 37 percent plant-based and transparently sourced ingredients, such as bark, castor beans, and corn. This substantially reduces its carbon footprint in comparison to virgin PE and standard fossil-based coatings.

Davide Reverdito Bove, Sector Marketing Manager Printing & Packaging at Covestro: "While PE laminates do a good job of protecting food contents, they make food packaging virtually impossible to recycle. As a result, a lot of them go to landfill or are incinerated. Our new resin is a game-changer in addressing this issue. It gives food producers and packaging makers an excellent opportunity to deliver the protection that packaging requires while having less impact on the environment. That’s just one reason why we are so proud of this new coating, and so excited to be telling the world about it."

To learn more about Decovery^® CQ 6010, visit its dedicated landing page: 
https://solutions.covestro.com/en/highlights/articles/stories/2023/decovery-cq-6010

A revolution in packaging materials

Traditional flexible plastic packaging uses multi-material laminates, which are difficult to recycle as it is expensive and time-consuming to separate the different polymer layers. Driven by concern around packaging waste from consumers, governments, and industry, packaged goods brands are looking for more circular solutions. One increasingly popular option is mono-material packaging, made with materials such as BOPE.

BOPE can be used to make flexible packaging in which all the layers are manufactured from PE polymer grades. This packaging can then be recycled in a single stream. However, BOPE-based mono-material stand-up pouches are difficult to manufacture at scale on FFS lines due to their low heat resistance compared with current PET- or PA-containing laminates. To solve this problem, Covestro engineered a heat-resistant coating for mono-PE BOPE-based stand-up pouches. This increases the pouches’ heat resistance so they can be manufactured on high-speed FFS production lines while maintaining high visual and performance qualities. Thanks to Covestro’s new coating, SABIC’s BOPE polymer can be a viable alternative to replace PA and PET containing multi-material laminates for flexible plastic packaging.

"We take our responsibility to create lower-impact packaging seriously. Our circular economy strategy focuses on recyclable solutions that unlock pathways toward closing the loop on materials," explains Davide Reverdito Bove, Sector Marketing Manager at Covestro. "In SABIC, we found an expert partner. This close collaboration will enable us to accelerate the engineering and testing process of our new heat-resistant coating for BOPE with clear benefits for the product quality, the customer, and the planet."

Catalyzing circularity in the packaging industry

Covestro’s heat-resistant coating has several benefits for packaging manufacturers. It prevents heat seal bars from sticking during the sealing stage of the HFFS and VFFS process – allowing for a broader sealing temperature window and eliminating wrinkling and shrinkage. This enables the creation of high-performing mono-material flexible stand-up pouches with simple, single-stream recyclability.

"Thanks to this heat-resistant coating solution for flexible packaging, manufacturers can meet challenges in processing, without compromising on the properties and machinability of the packaging," says Roel Beckers, Sales Manager at Covestro. "It allows a faster switch to mono-PE solutions and the use of the BOPE material as we work with global value chain partners who share our mindset of contributing to a more circular plastics economy."

Covestro innovative heat-resistant coating enables brands, retailers, film producers, and others in the value chain to create new high-performance yet recyclable mono-material packaging – supporting the drive to achieve a circular economy for flexible packaging in Europe and beyond. Although the coating is currently at the proof-of-concept stage, Covestro and SABIC are excited to further develop this innovative solution into a commercial product, helping brands and consumers achieve their sustainability ambitions. By embracing open innovation, both Covestro and SABIC are also committed to working together with the full packaging value chain to accelerate the introduction of more circular packaging solutions to the market.

Covestro has identified the problem - and has developed a process for recycling companies and packaging manufacturers to address this problem: In the case of multi-layer film packages laminated with polyurethane (PU) adhesive, the respective materials can be separated from one another again thanks to the new technology. The team will now present the development at the K 2022 trade fair from 19 to 26 October in Düsseldorf.

In the process, a special separation agent specifically weakens the bond strength of the PU adhesive. Since the separation agent consists of natural ingredients and water, it is also very sustainable. For packaging manufacturers and recyclers, the process offers a major advantage: "Our know-how helps them to make better use of the residual value of their packaging and thus makes more materials available to the recycling industry," says Thomas Fait. The New Business Development Manager for Adhesives at Covestro has led the development of the technology on a laboratory scale. "With projects like this, we contribute to achieve our corporate vision: to make the circular economy a reality. For this purpose, we work with partners from a wide variety of fields and industries and are always looking for ways how our products and technologies can help other companies become circular."

At the K 2022 trade fair, the team will be presenting the technology to the plastics industry for the first time and looking for potential partners from the packaging and recycling industry to further develop the process together with them.

Under all the parameters required for the production of packaging, manufacturers need efficient machines to produce and process the corrugated board and paper sheets. For this purpose, these machines are equipped with cast polyurethane parts such as anvil covers and pinch wheels.

High demands in production

These parts must have specific properties in order to produce and process corrugated paper and paper sheets advantageously. In order to prolong the working time of cutting operations, the anvil cover parts that protect the rolls must develop high cut resistance and very good hardness stability. The high rotational speed of the roller and the sharp knives are key elements that guarantee a longer and more efficient operating time of the rotary die-cutting process.

On the other hand, the corrugated board sheets must be handled carefully after cutting to avoid damage. The squeeze-free wheels used to drive the sheets not only need to be suitably designed, but must also have a good and soft grip, regardless of the paper grade.

Covestro offers elastomer solutions

Covestro Elastomers supplies polyurethane systems that are used to manufacture these two parts by means of a casting process. Systems based on Desmodur^® have proven to be a powerful solution for the requirements of the packaging and paper industry. Ester-based products have proven to be reliable solutions for anvil covers and wheels without crushing. In order to meet demand, Covestro Elastomers increased the stock of the raw materials concerned and secured the shipping with trusted carrier companies.

"Safety is a priority for all of us during the Corona crisis," says Olivier Vasseur, Sales Manager at Covestro Elastomers. "Nevertheless, we are encouraged by the solutions we have been able to develop for the packaging and corrugated cardboard industry. Overall, the challenge that this crisis presents to us strengthens the partnership with our customers."

"Times of crisis are the driving force for innovation," says Dr. Thomas Braig, President of Covestro Elastomers. "We want to use the full creative potential of our research staff to support all industries in their search for innovative elastomer solutions."