Welcome back to the mic, Adam Peek here! That was a fantastic chat with Clara and Benoît from Lactips. They’re doing some seriously innovative stuff over in France, tackling the microplastics problem head-on with a bio-based, water-soluble, and fully biodegradable material made from milk protein.
If you’re in the packaging space, this is the kind of game-changing innovation you need to be paying attention to. It hits the trifecta: Performance, Planet, and Policy.
Here’s a breakdown of what we discussed and why Lactips is a company to watch:
🎙️ Episode Highlight: Raging Against the Microplastic Machine with Lactips
Clara and Benoît joined us from the Southeast of France to dive into their mission to clean up the packaging industry. They’re not just creating a ‘better’ plastic—they’re offering a natural, protein-based alternative that completely dissolves and leaves behind zero microplastics.
🥛 The Science Behind the Solution
The Origin Story: Lactips was founded by Frédéric Prochazka, a researcher who investigated the potential of bio-based materials. He discovered that Casein, one of the main milk proteins, was an ideal base.
The Raw Material: They produce a raw material (pellets) that manufacturers can use to create films, coatings, and small injection-molded parts.
The Key Differentiator: Water-Solubility. This isn’t just “biodegradable” in a perfect industrial composter. Their material is fully biodegradable in all environments and, crucially, is water-soluble.
♻️ Solving Real Packaging Problems
Food Contact: This material is food-contact safe, providing both grease barrier and sealability to paper products.
The Cookie Box Problem: Think about that plastic film on a typical cookie box—or worse, a box where the fat seeps right through! Lactips offers a plastic-free barrier solution for dry and fatty products (like those beloved cookies, cereal bars, or even teabags).
Improving Recycling: Since the material dissolves during the re-pulping phase of paper recycling, it acts as a recycling facilitator, leading to significantly higher fiber recovery compared to traditional polyethylenes (PE). This makes the end product fully recyclable in the paper stream.
🌍 The Global Push for Sustainable Materials
Regulations are Driving Change: We discussed how regulations like the Single-Use Plastics (SUP) Directive and the upcoming PPWR in the EU are creating an economic incentive for brands to seek alternatives to plastic.
Cost & Competition: While Lactips might be a higher-cost material than traditional plastics initially, new taxes and mandates (like the UK Plastics Tax or various EPR laws) will increasingly create a cost-competitive delta, making advanced solutions like Lactips the smart business choice.
Collective Awareness: Consumer and industry knowledge about microplastic pollution is at an all-time high, pushing brands toward visibly and verifiably sustainable solutions.
💡 Actionable Takeaways for the #PeopleOfPackaging
Stop Fighting the Fat, Start Dissolving the Plastic: If you’re designing packaging for dry/fatty food products and are struggling with plastic barriers for grease/seal, look into water-soluble protein-based solutions like Lactips.
Follow the Regulations: What starts in the EU often comes to the US. Proactively investing in non-plastic alternatives now will help you future-proof your product against incoming EPR mandates and plastics taxes, potentially turning a regulatory cost into a competitive marketing advantage.
Connect with the Innovators: The Lactips team is ready to talk about your specific challenges.
🔗 How to Connect with Lactips
Website: Head over to www.lactips.com and hit the “Contact” form—they are a small team and promise a quick response!
LinkedIn: Search for Lactips and give them a follow. You can also connect directly with Clara and Benoît.
Thanks again to Clara and Benoît for sharing their incredible vision and technology. Let’s keep working to make the packaging world cleaner, smarter, and more sustainable!
I’m Adam Peek, and you’ve been listening to the People of Packaging Podcast.
