Fiberdom, a pioneer in wood fiber material innovation has successfully completed industrial pilot trials of its plastic-free Duranova® material using a continuous reel-to-reel pilot line supplied by Vits Technology GmbH, a global market leader in supplying impregnation and coating lines for technical and decorative papers, films, and laminates.
The trials were conducted at VITS’s development center in Germany, representing the first application of Fiberdom’s material in a reel-to-reel industrial pilot process—an essential requirement for large-scale thermoformable product and packaging converters.
The work comes as the packaging and short service-life product industries face increasing pressure to transition to more sustainable materials under the proposed EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which targets significant reductions in plastic packaging and food service products across EU member states.
During the trials, Fiberdom tested multiple production parameters and paper grades. The work focused on process stability, runnability, and repeatability rather than final product optimization. Results demonstrated that Fiberdom’s plastic-free, natural fiber material—combining durability with extended formability—can be processed on industrial pilot machinery in a continuous production format suitable for verifying scale-up potential.
“A key challenge for new materials is finding the best machine setup and corresponding process parameter for demonstrating reliable processing in continuous industrial operations,” said Arne Weber, Head of Laboratory at Vits. “Running Fiberdom’s material successfully on our reel-to-reel pilot line shows that it can be integrated into the same development and scale-up environment used for established paper-based substrates, which is an important step toward future industrial implementation.”
For Fiberdom, the trials represent an important milestone in advancing the industrial production of plastic-free natural fiber materials designed to meet rising performance and regulatory expectations in packaging and other short- and long-lifespan applications.
“For the packaging industry, plastic-free materials have often meant compromises between performance and scalability,” said Duncan Mayes, Chief Technology Officer at Fiberdom. “Demonstrating that a plastic-free fiber material can run in standard reel-to-reel production environments changes that equation and broadens what is realistically possible at industrial scale for converters, board producers, and brand owners working to meet new regulatory and brand requirements.”
Fiberdom’s material is already in commercial use in Finland in single-use cutlery products. Through these recent trials, Fiberdom continues to evaluate multiple production pathways as it advances toward serving broader industrial and packaging applications.