WestRock Company announced an expansion of its CanCollar® family of multipack solutions with the introduction of CanCollar® X, a fiber-based solution for sustainable large format canned beverage packaging enabling as much as fifty percent material reduction compared to fully-enclosed traditional packaging. As the newest addition to the family of solutions automated by the patented CanCollar Fortuna® platform, CanCollar® X uses a similar fiber-based, glue-free minimalist design preferred by consumers to maximize can visibility, is comfortable for consumers to handle and optimizes the use of material to bundle multipacks for larger formats. “Whether it’s beer, soft drinks, or sparkling water, across the globe large multipacks of cans are packaged in shrink film,” said Chris Davidson, vice president, Sustainability at WestRock. “With CanCollar® X we have an opportunity to significantly reduce materials when compared to fully-enclosed cartons and replace hard-to-recycle plastic shrink wrap with recyclable fiber-based packaging, improving circularity at impressive scale.”

The Board of Smurfit Kappa (the “Board”) announces that it received a revised proposal (the “Revised Proposal”) from International Paper Company (“International Paper”) on Thursday evening, 22 March 2018. Under the terms of the Revised Proposal, Smurfit Kappa shareholders would receive €25.25 in cash (which would be reduced to €24.605 after payment of the final dividend of 64.5 cent recommended on 7 February 2018 and to be paid on 11 May 2018 (the “Final Dividend”)) and 0.3028 new shares of International Paper common stock for each Smurfit Kappa ordinary share held by them.

American Packaging Corporation announces five APC Centers of Excellence achieved International Sustainability and Carbon Certification PLUS. APC's Columbus, Wisconsin, Deforest, Wisconsin, Story City, Iowa, Chili, New York and Rochester, New York plants all achieved the certification, allowing APC to source and convert advanced recycled resins and films, often called circular content. These circular content resins and films are used to manufacture packaging products requiring recycled content and tracks the usage through a mass-balance accounting process, a methodology that looks at all inputs and outputs of a particular process. ISCC PLUS certification plays a crucial role in the development of the circular economy by ensuring the traceability of advanced recycled plastics along the entire supply chain in compliance with the ISCC PLUS standards. Unlike traditional mechanically recycled content, the advanced recycled process converts materials to the molecular level, offering a feedstock that can be used to produce new plastic materials with properties equal to virgin plastic. The result is eco-friendly materials that are highly sought-after by environmentally conscious consumers. This certification provides an additional and complementary option to mechanically recycled materials for those customers wishing to utilize recycled content.