Four stories this week look unrelated at first glance: a fibre market update, a corporate spinoff, a market forecast and a medical packaging trial. Put together, they describe one condition. Recycled content targets, in both paper and plastic, are running into the same wall: there is not enough high-quality recycled material to go around, and the material that does exist degrades with use.
Virgin fibre is not going away
Packaging Dive reports that despite rising customer demand for recycled fibre, demand for virgin fibre remains very much alive and well, according to industry experts, because some packaging simply requires virgin fibre for functionality. The reason is mechanical, not commercial.
Bill Moore, president of consulting firm Moore & Associates, said recycled fiber is inherently less strong than virgin fibre, so at the high-strength end of the market it is mostly virgin, while the rest of the market is highly recycled. A Smurfit Westrock leader put the practical limit bluntly: without sourced virgin fibre coming into the system, at some point all of the fibre is too short to make boxes. Smurfit Westrock illustrates the split inside one company: of its 21 mills, 13 use mostly virgin fibre and eight primarily use recycled.
The numbers show how recycled content varies by product rather than following a single industry average. In 2025 the average corrugated box was made with 52% recycled content, according to the Fibre Box Association, while solid board reached up to 88% recycled content, and food-contact packaging held less than half, according to Moore. At the system level, recycled fibre use in US containerboard has risen from 46% in 2012 to 56% in 2025, Moore’s data shows.
Fibre also has a hard physical ceiling. There will always be demand for virgin fibre because recycled fibres break down over time: starches and other strengthening agents can improve durability, but fibres typically cannot be recycled again after about five to seven cycles. For converters and brand owners chasing higher recycled content percentages, this is the practical limit they are designing against, not a target that keeps rising indefinitely.
A fibre supply chain in flux: International Paper’s EMEA sale talks
The fibre story has a corporate dimension this week too. International Paper, the largest US-based producer of corrugated packaging and a major European player since its acquisition of DS Smith, confirmed it is weighing a sale of its EMEA packaging business alongside its planned spinoff.
Packaging Dive reports that International Paper has received unsolicited bids for the company it plans to spin off, which the fiber producer confirmed in a statement. The interest reportedly came from private equity firms Lone Star and Atlas Holdings, who are pursuing deals to purchase the spinoff company, according to the Financial Times. International Paper was careful to stress that nothing is settled: the company confirmed it is progressing the spin off and evaluating the potential sale in parallel, and said discussions about an EMEA business sale are at an early stage with no guarantee a deal will occur.
The planned separation itself is moving forward on a set timeline. International Paper announced on January 29, 2026, that it expected to separate the EMEA Packaging Business through a spinoff, and has since confirmed the spinoff would be executed through a London Stock Exchange listing with a Level II ADR program on the New York Stock Exchange. A capital markets day is set for early November.
For converters and brand owners buying corrugated and containerboard in Europe, ownership uncertainty at this scale matters. Capital allocation, mill investment and recycled-content strategy at Europe’s largest fibre packaging supplier are all under a cloud until a buyer, or a confirmed spinoff, is settled. That uncertainty sits on top of the virgin-versus-recycled tension described above: whoever owns this business inherits the same physical constraints on fibre quality and the same customer pressure for higher recycled content.
Plastic has the identical problem, with regulation pulling harder
The fibre feedstock squeeze has a close parallel in food-grade recycled plastic resin. A market analysis published by IndexBox frames the dynamic in similar terms to the fibre story, but with pharmaceutical and nutraceutical brand owners as the driving force rather than box customers.
Demand for food grade PCR resin is not originating from converter preference but from top-down procurement mandates imposed by large pharmaceutical and nutraceutical brand owners, who are embedding recycled content targets into their packaging specifications and forcing the supply chain to adapt. The constraint is not manufacturing capacity. Supply is bottlenecked at the feedstock level, where scarcity of consistently high-quality, food-contact-designated post-consumer plastic bales creates a decisive advantage for players with upstream control of waste collection and sorting.
The report also names EU regulation directly as a factor reshaping the market. As regulatory frameworks such as the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation shift from barriers to enablers, the market is positioned for accelerated adoption through 2035, with secondary packaging and nutraceuticals as near-term adoption vectors. This is consistent with the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation’s own minimum recycled content requirements for plastic packaging from 2030, which readers of this publication will already be tracking against their own plastic packaging portfolios.
Market forecasts from a single research firm should be read as directional rather than precise. What the fibre and plastic stories agree on is the shape of the constraint: brand owner specification is running ahead of the physical supply of qualified, food-contact recycled feedstock, in both materials.
Medical packaging tests how far recycled content can go
Nowhere is the feedstock-quality question sharper than in sterile medical packaging, where safety requirements have historically ruled out recycled content altogether. A collaborative project reported by Packaging Digest shows how that is starting to shift, carefully.
A collaborative project involving Coloplast, Impact Plastics, and Placon is testing whether post-industrial recycled (PIR) PETG can be incorporated into thermoformed sterile barrier systems, with promising results. Specifically, PIR PETG with a 70% recycled core and virgin outer layers performed like legacy material in forming, sealing, and distribution testing. Traceability, the issue that has kept recycled content out of sterile packaging for decades, was addressed directly: full traceability was maintained, with batch numbers tracked from extrusion through thermoforming to enable medical-grade compliance.
The trigger for the project was procurement pressure rather than material science. Jennifer Lauderback of Impact Plastics explained the gap she found between customer sustainability criteria and what the industry could actually supply: she helped initiate the project after learning about environmentally preferable purchasing standards at Kaiser Permanente, where two of eight waste criteria required recycled materials in medical packaging, even though recycled material was not currently being used in sterile packaging because of the need for traceability.
This matters for medical device manufacturers and healthcare systems well beyond the three named companies. It establishes a template, PIR content with documented chain of custody, that other converters serving regulated sectors can point to when customers ask for recycled content in applications where post-consumer material remains too hard to qualify. It is also a reminder that “recycled content” is not one claim: PIR and PCR carry different traceability burdens, and sterile applications will likely stay with PIR for some time.
Bio-based materials move into the components, not just the substrate
Most recycled-content conversations focus on the main substrate: the box, the bottle, the tray. A product launch from CJ Biomaterials and Dongsung Chemical this week is a reminder that components matter too, and that bio-based content can enter packaging through adhesives as easily as through films or board.
The companies introduced what they describe as the first PHA-based hotmelt adhesive available in the US market. Dongsung Chemical and CJ Biomaterials introduced the first PHA-based hotmelt adhesive available in the US market that features measurable biobased content and a lower carbon footprint compared with conventional adhesives. The product, ECOVIVA, is built around CJ Biomaterials’ polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) biopolymer and is aimed at a specific set of applications: it is designed for cosmetics packaging, household goods, electronics, and other consumer packaging, and bonds challenging substrate combinations including paper to aluminium and paper to ABS.
Two practical details will matter to converters evaluating it. First, drop-in compatibility: the adhesive offers cold resistance and works with existing application equipment, meaning it does not require new hot-melt nozzles or rollers on the line. Second, independent verification: the adhesive has received DIN CERTCO biobased certification in Germany. It already has a commercial reference point, with COSMAX, the cosmetics ODM company, using the PHA-based adhesive in its packaging process for eyeshadow products.
For brand owners under pressure to cut carbon and fossil content across a whole pack, not just the primary material, adhesives, inks and coatings are the next layer to scrutinise. A substrate switch to fibre or mono-material plastic does not automatically mean the pack is free of petroleum-based inputs if the adhesive holding it together still is.
What connects the four stories
Fibre and plastic recyclers face the same arithmetic: brand owner commitments and, in the EU, binding regulatory minimums are rising faster than the supply of qualified recycled feedstock. Fibre has a known physical ceiling, five to seven recycling cycles before the material is too short to use. Plastic has a quality and traceability ceiling, visible starkly in the medical sector, where PIR with full chain-of-custody is currently the only workable path to recycled content in sterile applications.
Against that backdrop, ownership changes at major fibre suppliers and new component-level bio-based materials are both responses to the same pressure: packaging companies looking for any lever, structural or material, that eases the recycled-content bind without sacrificing performance.
| Development | Material affected | Who it affects | What changes in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virgin fibre demand holding steady alongside recycled growth | Corrugated, containerboard, solid board | Converters, brand owners, retailers | Expect continued blending of virgin and recycled fibre; recycled content plateaus above certain strength requirements |
| International Paper weighing sale of EMEA packaging business | Fibre packaging supply in Europe | Brand owners and converters sourcing from IP or DS Smith mills | Ownership uncertainty into 2027; watch the November 3 capital markets day for detail |
| Food-grade PCR resin feedstock scarcity | rPET, rHDPE, rPP for food and pharma contact | Pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and food brand owners; recyclers | Premium pricing and allocation risk persist; PPWR minimums add urgency from 2030 |
| PIR PETG trial in sterile medical trays | PETG medical device packaging | Medical device makers, converters, healthcare procurement | Traceable PIR becomes a near-term recycled-content option; PCR remains constrained by sterility rules |
| PHA-based hotmelt adhesive launch | Hotmelt adhesives in cosmetics and consumer packaging | Brand owners, converters, adhesive formulators | Bio-based content can be added at component level without substrate redesign or new equipment |
What to do now
- If you specify corrugated or containerboard, ask suppliers for their actual recycled content by grade rather than assuming a single company-wide figure; it varies widely between solid board, corrugated and food-contact applications.
- If you buy from International Paper or DS Smith mills in Europe, flag the EMEA ownership situation as a supply chain risk to monitor through the November capital markets day and into 2027.
- If your recycled content targets rely on food-grade PCR resin, build in lead time and price contingency for feedstock scarcity; this is a structural constraint, not a temporary one.
- If you work in medical or other regulated packaging, look at PIR with documented traceability as the realistic near-term route to recycled content, rather than waiting for PCR to clear sterility requirements.
- If you are assessing a pack’s full carbon or fossil-content footprint, check adhesives and coatings as well as the substrate; component-level bio-based options are now commercially available.
Sources
- Source: Amid push for recycled fiber packaging, virgin demand remains strong (Packaging Dive)
- Source: International Paper entertains offers for EMEA business (Packaging Dive)
- Source: Food Grade PCR Resin Market Forecast to 2035 (IndexBox)
- Source: Can Recycled PETG be Used in Sterile Medical Packaging? (Packaging Digest)
- Source: Dongsung Chemical and CJ Biomaterials Introduce First PHA-Based ECOVIVA Hotmelt Adhesive (Packaging World)