STI Group: Sustainable silphie display for Gillette

Silphie fibre offers a promising avenue for brands with a bold sustainability agenda that wish to optimise the carbon footprint of their packaging and POP. Seeing P&G committing to silphie-based displays could give fresh impetus to the market and consumers. As ‘pioneers in packaging’, STI Group sees its role as being an innovation and development partner for customers. Its Circular Innovation Initiative spans the entire company group, with a focus on developing and bringing to market sustainable concepts such as this silphie display.

STI Group has been researching the real-world technical properties of the new material since late 2020. In cooperation with OutNature, STI Group put silphie paper’s stability and printability to the test and also examined its behaviour during diecutting and gluing. This means the company’s production facilities can be confident processing silphie-based cardboard and corrugated board.

Silphie paper
Silphie paper consists of 35% silphie fibre, a highly resource-efficient, fully recyclable plant fibre that is suitable for both food and non-food use. As silphie can be cultivated locally, its use reduces the CO2 emissions associated with long distance transport. Silphie fibre also takes less water and energy to process and its extraction does not require any chemicals.

For farmers, the silphie plant offers added sustainability benefits by being insect-friendly, storing CO2 in the soil and helping to protect farmland from wind and water erosion.

Until now, this robust perennial plant has mainly been used to manufacture biogas. When OutNature succeeded in separating the plant fibres using a biothermal process, it transformed silphie into a brand new raw material – one that can be locally produced in Germany, revolutionising the paper and packaging industry.