Indorama Ventures and AMB Spa introduce industrial-scale breakthrough for recyclable multilayer trays
Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited, a global sustainable chemical company, and AMB Spa, one of Europe’s leading packaging solutions providers, have unveiled a next-generation PET multilayer tray designed for recycling. Helping to meet the European Union’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and accelerate true circularity for complex food packaging.
The two companies have jointly developed a tray structure that embeds recycled PET flakes within the core, while applying virgin food-grade PET to the outer layers. The design matches the performance — food safety, optical clarity, sealing — that brand owners and regulators require, while substantially increasing recycled content. Most importantly, the tray also remains recyclable after use, creating a material-to-material circular loop that keeps PET in high-value applications.
This initiative helps to position Europe at the forefront of sustainable packaging, offering retailers and brand owners a scalable drop-in alternative to downcycling. The solution fully aligns with future recyclability and recycled-content requirements under the PPWR, including the target of reaching an average of 30% recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030.
Turning a challenge into a circular solution. Multilayer trays are essential in protecting food products, extending shelf life and reducing food waste. A 2024 case study showed PET Trays extended shelf life from 6 to 15 days, reducing average food waste from 47% to 15%.1
While PET trays deliver strong shelf-life performance, the next frontier is ensuring that more of this valuable material stays in circulation. Today, around 30% of PET trays in Europe are collected for recycling2— a rate that is set to rise as innovative technologies and industry partnerships such as these take hold. To fully unlock this potential, developing effective recycling pathways for multilayer trays is essential to reducing waste and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
“This solution demonstrates that multilayer trays can meet circularity goals in practice, not just on paper,” said Paolo Cescutti, Chief Procurement Officer at AMB Spa. “It proves that innovation and collaboration can unlock new recycling pathways, even for the most complex packaging waste streams.”
“A scalable innovation like this enables the tray industry to maintain high performance while moving decisively toward Europe’s circular-economy ambitions,” said Andy Motta, Business Director for Europe and Türkiye, CPET, at Indorama Ventures. “It reflects our commitment to solutions that strengthen recycling systems.”
Production of the new multilayer tray structure is already active at Indorama Ventures’ Verdun Recycling facility in France. Finished trays are being supplied to customers in the UK, with broader European deployment in progress.
This announcement builds on the successful 2023 collaboration between Indorama Ventures and AMB Spa, which laid the foundation for advancing PET tray recyclability. Since then, the partnership has progressed from concept development to full-scale production of complex multilayer trays, enabling tray-to-tray recycling through a design-for-recycling approach and delivering a fully circular solution for high-performance food packaging.
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