BillerudKorsnäs Launches First Climate-Positive Packaging

As a result of innovative thinking based on decades of competence from papermaking, BillerudKorsnäs, Sweden, this week launched its first packaging with a climate-positive impact. D-Sack®, the dissolvable sack for cement and other construction materials, disintegrates in a conventional mixer and the bio-based carbon in the paper is captured in the construction itself. 

The award-winning D-Sack, co-developed in a close cooperation between BillerudKorsnäs and LafargeHolcim, has several significant advantages over conventional cement sacks. The sack dissolves during the mixing process, which minimizes cement waste, eliminates packaging waste, and saves time, while ensuring a cleaner, safer, and healthier workplace.

In addition to the above benefits, D-Sack is superior to conventional cement sacks when it comes to climate performance. In a life cycle assessment conducted by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, D-Sack proves to capture CO2 over a one hundred-year perspective, meaning that it is climate positive. The reason is that the CO2 that was captured from the atmosphere during tree growth and then incorporated into the paper, is stored in the concrete structure.

D-Sack is an excellent example of the potential in challenging conventional packaging with a sustainable future as the target. By exploring the sustainability performance of BillerudKorsnäs products further ahead in the value chain, i.e. during and after the use of the packaging, new exciting opportunities for value creation appear. That is why BillerudKorsnäs successfully has built up a sack laboratory where D-Sack was developed.

"I am extremely proud of this achievement and very pleased that D-Sack has now been formally launched. It is an innovation that has been produced in our sack laboratory in close cooperation with LafargeHolcim designed to meet specific user needs and needs in the value chain. The sack laboratory has done an excellent job and set the standard for innovation in the packaging industry," says Mark van der Merwe, business development director, Sack Solutions at BillerudKorsnäs.

"We believe in the potential of developing existing solutions further, in our business as well as in the packaging industry. Concepts like D-Sack, i.e. results of innovativeness and cooperation, strengthen our contribution to a sustainable future," says Henrik Essén, SVP Communication & Sustainability at BillerudKorsnäs.

Film and more information are available online. For further information, contact Mark van der Merwe, business development director, Sack Solutions.