Imagine opening a handheld cone‑packaged ice cream. As you peel back the wrapper, you are holding an aluminum foil–paper laminate – effectively unchanged from the material used for cone wrappers since the 1970s.
“These sleeves have not changed in 50 years,” says Frank Skupin, senior sales manager at European packaging specialists Huhtamaki. “They have long met the expectations of converters, manufacturers and ice‑cream consumers. But as recyclability becomes a central industry priority, the time has come to transition to mono materials.“
Huhtamaki is one of the world's leading packaging converters and a major player in the ice cream category. And the company has a long-standing relationship with Sappi. That’s why they collaborated to explore whether a barrier paper could do the job aluminum currently does – keeping the baked sugar cone crisp, the ice cream fresh and the packaging performing through every stage of production.
The answer, after years of development, is yes, it can – with Guard Duo, Sappi's innovative barrier paper, as the material at the center of the solution. The new packaging will be demonstrated at Interpack in Düsseldorf this May.
Much of the impetus for innovations like this comes from regulation. The European Union’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which enters into application in August, penalises hard-to-recycle packaging – and, from 2030, bans non-recyclable packaging completely. Multi-layer laminates that combine incompatible materials – paper bonded to aluminum foil, for instance – sit uncomfortably in that future. For cone sleeve manufacturers, that means the course of the journey is towards recyclable, mono-material packaging.
A problem in several layers
From a technical standpoint, cone sleeves set a demanding brief. The packaging must be printable, formable and sealable with a hot melt adhesive. It must survive being filled with a sugar cone and ice cream on a high-speed production line, then crimped shut on the lid.
Additionally, it needs to maintain the crispness and freshness of the product for months in a freezer cabinet with significant humidity at -18°C. And, when the consumer finally peels it open, it has to unwrap cleanly and easily.
Aluminum handles all of this with proven reliability. Replacing it with an all-paper solution – which would meet PPWR requirements – meant starting from scratch on nearly every parameter.
The development journey
The first move was to try a single-sided barrier coating. It quickly became clear that was not enough – cone sleeves are stacked before filling, meaning the outer surface of each sleeve is in contact with the greasy inner surface of the next cone in the pile. Without foil on the outside, the paper needs grease resistance on both faces.
Guard Duo, which has barrier varnish applied to both sides, provided a solution. Refinements were also made to the base paper itself to achieve the mechanical properties required for consistent conversion, such as stay-flat characteristics, dimensional stability and durability under the stresses of a high-speed forming line.
Shelf life validation necessitated testing under real frozen storage conditions, with both accelerated and real-time protocols run in partnership with brand owners and sugar cone producers. The three-way collaboration – Sappi, Huhtamaki and their respective customers – drove each successive iteration.
We start with the idea and product development, but then during the testing process you discover different demands that you have to react to. Sappi improves the material and then you go back to the converter and brand owner for further assessment. It’s the kind of close collaboration needed to develop and bring a product to life.
says Frank Skupin.
The converter's challenge
As a converter, Huhtamaki had a number of additional considerations related to the printing quality as well as the various process steps to manufacture cone sleeves. Optimizations are under way and partly implemented.
Meanwhile, the crimping process, in which the material is bent over to secure the lid and keep the cone closed, required significant attention. Aluminum has what Skupin describes as a “dead fold” – bend it and it stays bent. Paper, on the other hand, has “memory” in that it wants to spring back. “We needed to work on that in-house to make sure that the sleeves remain crimped and in a dead-fold locked position,” says Skupin. “And we succeeded.”
At Interpack in May, the proof of concept will be demonstrated on the Sappi stand in the most practical, and tasty, of ways – visitors will be handed an ice cream cone packaged in the new sleeve. Though further product testing is still required, Skupin hopes this will be completed by Q3 this year. “I would like to have the first commercial products on the European market by 2027,” he says.
The collaboration between Huhtamaki and Sappi, he notes, has been built on exactly the right foundations. “Sappi brings the technology, the background and the experience. We bring in the voice of the customer and the market intelligence. It is a unique and successful cooperation.”