Mikro Coffee Roasters, of Torquay, south-west of Melbourne, is a carbon neutral company and part of the 1% For the Planet programme, while all its coffee beans are sustainably sourced from just two fair-trade suppliers in Australia and Brazil.
The company now ships its award-winning coffee in ‘Earthpouch’ packs developed in the UK by Sirane using Sylvicta paper (see ‘A new leaf’). Sirane applies both a heat-seal and moisture barrier coating to the paper to complement Sylvicta’s inherent oxygen and grease barrier. The design won a silver award in the food category of the Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design Awards. TCL Hofmann, which represents Sirane in Australia, says the packaging forgoes what has traditionally been a requirement of the coffee industry – a non-recyclable zip-lock and one-way valve.
According to Sirane, Mikro is one of a handful of coffee roasters who have made the switch to the new packaging. ‘Paper is a great solution for coffee packaging … the plastics recycling system in Australia is broken,’ says Mikro’s founder Valeri Tkatchenko.
The Earthpouch enables ‘dead-folds’ to be created along the top of the pack within the paper-substrate, which ‘lock in’ the freshness of the coffee. The FSC-certified packaging is fully kerbside recyclable.
A significant part of this transition from plastic to paper was enabled by Mikro’s designer, Narelle Craven of studio Logozoo.
For Tkatchenko the move to paper has paid off. ‘The real cost of not considering the environmental factors is not in dollars, it’s far greater to us, so we make decisions accordingly.’
There are other benefits in the change of materials besides environmental ones, Tkatchenko believes. The new Mikro packs demonstrate how water-based inks can be applied as a ‘satin metallic’ finish not usually associated with paper-printed substrates. ‘To me, the look and feel of the paper feels more premium,’ Tkatchenko says. ‘Plastic feels cheap and outdated, so the new paper packaging actually complements our premium coffee brand.’
Material
Sylvicta