Mondelēz International, PepsiCo and pladis have joined forces in a Belgium-wide trial testing whether invisible digital watermarks can meaningfully improve the sorting and recycling of flexible plastic food packaging — a development that could support the food industry’s progress toward circular packaging systems ahead of incoming EU regulatory requirements.
The trial, operating under the HolyGrail 2030 – Circular Packaging Consortium and facilitated by AIM – European Brands Association, marks the first national-scale exercise in Europe involving flexible post-consumer packaging collected through a household recycling system. It brings together approximately 79 local, European and global companies and organisations to test intelligent sorting technologies under real-world conditions.
At the heart of the pilot is a straightforward but technically significant question: can digital watermarking help sorting systems reliably identify whether flexible packaging once held food — and do so at a scale that supports food-grade recycling?
A digital watermark is an imperceptible code embedded across the full surface of packaging during the printing process. In this trial, Digimarc watermarks are applied to wrappers, films and other plastic food packaging. Once collected through Belgium’s household recycling infrastructure managed by Fost Plus, sorted bales of film are transported to Hündgen Entsorgungs’ sorting centre in Germany. There, high-resolution cameras supplied by machine vendor Pellenc ST read the embedded watermarks, identifying packaging characteristics including material type and prior food contact status.
Flexible food packaging currently presents one of the more complex challenges in packaging circularity. Recycling it into high-quality, food-grade applications demands that packaging meet strict safety and quality requirements — and accurate identification at the sorting stage is a critical enabler of that process, alongside appropriate recycling and decontamination technologies.
The 2030 deadline adds urgency. The European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation introduces recycled content requirements for certain categories of plastic food packaging from 2030, including a minimum ten percent recycled content requirement for some contact-sensitive packaging applications. These targets make practical, system-level evidence — of the kind this trial is designed to generate — increasingly important for the entire value chain.
Richard Akkermans, European R&D Packaging Productivity and Sustainability Manager at Mondelēz International, underlined the stakes involved: “HolyGrail 2030 is a pivotal, cross-industry initiative for better sorting and recycling of flexible packaging in the EU. Achieving circularity for food-contact flexible plastics isn’t just an ambition, it’s a necessity. In order to be ready for the ambitious recycled content targets in the upcoming EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, this market demonstration aims to provide the real-life technical learning that the value chain needs in order to increase the availability, compatibility and affordability of recycled plastic coming from new technologies.”
The Role of Technology and Design
Dietmar Lenko, VP Consumer Innovation & Product Sustainability at Constantia Flexibles, drew attention to how the printing process itself becomes a tool for circularity: “The design and printing process is more than decoration. It can become an enabler of circularity. By integrating digital watermark technology directly into the printed design, we support the identification of flexible polypropylene packaging in sorting facilities. Applied across a large area of the pack surface, the watermark can remain detectable even when the packaging is damaged. This helps sorting food-grade flexible PP and enables mechanical recycling.”
Philippe Gendebien, Business Innovation Manager at Fost Plus, noted the strengths that Belgium’s infrastructure brings to the exercise: “Belgium’s household collection system provides a strong real-world environment to test how digital watermarking can support more accurate sorting of flexible packaging. We can boast broad national coverage on the one hand and high-tech sorting centres on the other. By taking a step further now, the cards are just right to close the circle for flexible packaging.”
Bridging the Gap Between Ambition and Action
Liz Morrish, CEFLEX Leadership Team Operations Director, reinforced the importance of the transition from theoretical to applied testing: “Food-contact recycled content is where the industry has some of the biggest challenges and the least time. This trial moves testing from evidence-gathering into commercial reality, which is exactly what bridging the gap between ambition and the 2030 targets requires.”
The collaboration between Mondelēz International, PepsiCo, pladis and a broad network of technology providers, converters, sorting specialists and research institutes reflects the cross-industry coordination that flexible packaging recycling demands. The Belgian trial is designed not only to assess whether digital watermarking functions effectively under household recycling conditions, but to generate the technical and commercial insights the wider value chain will need as the 2030 regulatory deadline approaches.