No.El’s Research & Development effort has been focused on improving and exploring new technologies. Furthermore, in the last 10 years, they have been trying to combine technologies in order to create green options that reduce carbon production, waste, and costs. The coreless and pre-stretched technologies are major successes for No.El brought about by their “going green” policy and responsible business practices.

The new coreless technology is one of the most important objectives achieved by No.El: it presents scalable benefits and allows for the production of industry-standard sized rolls that support themselves without a core.

The pre-stretch technology saves wrapping material and allows for a consistent wrapping force around the package.

It helps stretch film producers to reduce their waste, since 100% of the film can be used for wrapping applications and leaves no cardboard tube to recycle.

“Going green” while keeping that innovation cost effective is a challenge in the plastic business, but our European customers are convinced that going coreless is a mandate for responsible business practices with a mind for the future. We believe that North American producers are ready to follow this trend, since it is cost effective and environmentally friendly.” Roberto Colombo

According to the Freedonia Group, the $3.7 billion stretch film industry in North America is due to grow at 4.7% per year, topping nearly $4.7 billion by 2011. Within this context, it is apparent that the use of cardboard tubes is expanding as well, creating tremendous tonnage that must later be trashed or recycle if North American film producers do not go coreless.

“The global emphasis on supply chain simplification and lowered levels of waste drove us to invent this new technology,” said Colombo. He points out that while systems for producing the film itself have become very efficient over the years, the industry still wastes money on procuring cardboard cores. “Then, film producers re-pay for cores in increased shipping costs due to the added weight in the roll,” he said. Even worse, Colombo points out that tubes also leave customers with a significant waste problem once the roll is depleted. “As a company focused on bringing efficiency to every step of stretch film production after extrusion, we felt the elimination of cardboard tubes was a humble but very strategic goal for No.El to address.” States Roberto Colombo Vice President of Sales and Partner.

CORELESS AND PRE-STRETCH FILM: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE FOR THE ENVIROMENT? A FEW FIGURES AND HIGH-LIGHTS

• If you currently wrap 100,000 pallets a year using a 20 micron film, you will use approximately 50 tons (1,100,000 lb) of stretch wrap per annum. Instead, when wrapping the same 100,000 pallets with Noel pre-stretched film, you use only 13.5 tons (29,700 lb)  of stretch wrap (73% less standard film).
• A European customer is located 200 miles from its supplier’s site and requires 9 deliveries of stretch film per annum. In a standard pallet of 360 hand reels, we have 7,000 to 8,000 meters (23,000/26,400 ft) of 20 microns conventional stretch film; instead in pallet loaded with No.El pre-stretched film we have 20/21.000 meters (60,000/69,200 ft). If the product is delivered by a truck that uses 1.28 gallons per 10 miles, the carbon emissions for this one delivery point each year is 2.170 kg CO2 equivalent to 395 kilograms carbon (Source: CO2 calculator, National Energy Efficiency website). If the customer had been using No.El pre-stretched film would have been able to receive the same footage of film in just three deliveries. This would have saved 1.446 kgs CO2 equivalent to 394 kgs carbon.
• A business using 1 pallet per week of coreless film can expect to remove up to 4 tons of cardboard per annum from the waste stream