From promising pilot to profitable parity and beyond: what will it take for fiber-based materials to compete with plastics?
For decades, the packaging industry has faced a familiar struggle: the need to reduce reliance on traditional plastics while maintaining profitability and performance. Sustainability goals have long been the driving force behind innovation in renewable, recyclable, and compostable materials; yet, remarkably few of these alternatives have achieved widespread adoption. The reason, in many cases, is not a lack of ingenuity. It’s economics.
Why do so many sustainable innovations fall short?
Across the industry, a familiar pattern often emerges. A new fiber-based material shows great promise, strong sustainability credentials, solid performance potential, and genuine excitement from early adopters. It gains momentum through pilot projects and industry discussions, yet when the time comes for large-scale production, that momentum halts.
More often than not, the challenge lies in economics. Procurement and finance teams, tasked with safeguarding margins, find that sustainable alternatives still face hurdles in matching the price or yield of polypropylene (PP) and other commodity plastics. As a result, projects may pause, waiting for a clearer business case. The issue isn’t about feasibility - fiber has proven its potential - but about achieving cost competitiveness in a way that works for both performance and profitability.
Weight and material efficiency are the key components
Changing this equation starts with one of the most fundamental physical properties of materials: weight. Plastics have historically excelled here, offering strength at low weight, a combination that translates into efficient material use, lower energy consumption, and attractive production economics.
Fiber-based materials, meanwhile, have traditionally needed greater material mass to meet the performance demands of end-product applications. This difference in strength-to-weight ratio has been one of the main factors influencing their cost competitiveness. However, it’s important to note that while many existing fiber technologies, from wet molding to different variations of dry forming, have played a vital role in advancing the field, these solutions do not yet match plastics in their formability and strength properties. Likewise, compostability and recyclability may also depend on specific material formulations and the presence or absence of barriers or coatings, making end-of-life benefits variable in practice.
Still, each fiber technology has contributed valuable learning about how renewable materials behave in real-world converting environments. The next step forward lies in continuing that evolution: combining these insights with new approaches that enhance strength and material efficiency, so fiber-based materials can match, or eventually even beat plastics, not only in sustainability, but also in performance and profitability.
If fiber materials are to truly rival plastics, they must match plastic’s strength-to-weight ratio. Lightweighting isn’t just a sustainability solution; it's also a business case. Newer dry-forming technologies, however, are beginning to change this equation, offering the potential to reduce both material input and energy use while maintaining high performance.
Doing more with less
At this year’s IFPC 2025 summit in Stockholm, one topic resonated strongly across discussions: “how to do more with less.” This principle has defined the evolution of plastics and must now define the next generation of fiber-based materials.
Recent advancements in fiber chemistry and dry-forming technologies suggest that the balance may finally be shifting, a movement that is supported by many conversations we’ve had with experienced industry players at recent packaging and materials trade exhibitions. By combining high-strength fiber formulations with efficient forming technologies that enable lightweight, high-performance applications, converters can reduce material usage per unit without compromising on product performance, production efficiency, or circularity.
Yet barriers to parity remain. Achieving full recyclability, compostability, and compliance with evolving regulations is complex. Some coatings required for barrier performance can affect end-of-life outcomes or increase costs. These are challenges that the industry is actively seeking to address. This is where the conversation changes. Once a fiber-based solution can deliver comparable strength at a significantly lower basis weight, the economics of fiber conversion begin to look very different.
When fiber meets the CFO’s approval
For sustainability to truly scale, it must meet both environmental and financial expectations. Converters and brand owners are eager to reduce their reliance on plastics, but they also need solutions that protect their margins. To reach mainstream adoption, fiber-based materials must demonstrate not only technical strength but also sound economics, making sense at production scale, delivering positive margins per unit produced, and integrating smoothly with existing converting infrastructure. They must also clearly navigate and pass regulatory requirements and transparently communicate end-of-life claims.
At Fiberdom, our modeling and industry benchmarking indicate that dry-forming processes using next-generation high-strength fibers can, for the first time, indicate production costs comparable to those of conventional plastics. This signals an encouraging shift: fiber-based solutions are moving beyond a sustainability aspiration toward a commercially compelling reality.
From potential to profitability
Moving from pilot projects to full-scale production has always been a complex step for new materials. The challenges are rarely about technology alone; they’re often tied to economic and systemic factors. Procurement teams look for predictability, brand owners for scalability, and investors for a clear path to profitability.
What will move fiber-based materials from niche to norm is not just another breakthrough, but alignment across performance, process efficiency, and price. The most successful solutions will be those where sustainability is a natural outcome of good business, not a compromise or trade-off.
We are now approaching that point of balance. Fiber materials have evolved from being seen purely as a sustainable alternative to becoming a credible business opportunity. With technologies that make fibers lighter, stronger, and more cost-efficient, and with a realistic approach to end-of-life, recycling, and regulation, the industry is closer than ever to achieving true competitiveness with traditional plastics.
The next step lies in collaboration between converters, brand owners, and material innovators to recalibrate the business case and bring these solutions to scale.