Coveris and recycling technology partner Nextek have received a Highly Commended distinction at the UK Horners Awards for their COtooCLEAN project, the packaging group announced on 10 November 2026.

The recognition comes less than a month after the project won Packaging Recycling Project of the Year at the UK Packaging Awards. For supermarkets and food manufacturers, the commercial significance lies in a difficult packaging problem: how to turn used flexible plastic film into recycled material that could potentially be used in food-contact packs.

COtooCLEAN uses supercritical carbon dioxide to remove contaminants from post-consumer polyolefin films. The process is being tested at industrial scale through a demonstration facility at Coveris’s site in Louth, Lincolnshire. The company says the plant is producing data needed to support regulatory approval.

Has COtooCLEAN been approved for food-contact packaging? Not on the evidence released by Coveris. Its technology is intended to enable food-grade recycling, but the company has explicitly described food-contact use as subject to regulatory approval. A successful demonstration is not the same as clearance for commercial food-contact applications.

That distinction matters for grocery procurement teams. Flexible films are common in food packs, but contamination and the complexity of collected film waste have made a closed-loop recycling system harder to establish than for some rigid packaging formats.

The project sits within Coveris’s ReCover recycling platform and its wider No Waste strategy. Its food-industry relevance extends beyond an awards programme: suppliers need technically viable materials that also satisfy safety rules, production requirements and pricing expectations.

The Horners Awards, run in partnership with the British Plastics Federation, recognise innovation and responsible use of plastics. The latest Highly Commended award follows an October win and offers an indication of industry attention, rather than proof that the technology has cleared its remaining commercial and regulatory hurdles.

Coveris is among the manufacturers operating in Europe’s mono-material food packaging supply chain, where recyclability is an increasingly important product-design and sourcing consideration.

For buyers, the next material development will be evidence on regulatory clearance, the quality of the recovered polymer, output capacity and whether recycled content can be supplied reliably at commercial scale.

Editor’s Note: Based on Coveris’s 10 November Horners Awards announcement and its 13 October technical description of COtooCLEAN. The award is confirmed; approval for food-contact use has not been established.