Innovation in recyclable fish packaging: kp Evolve® Fish Boards

All of this is important when considering that food waste is now one of the most important sustainability challenges in the fresh food chain. Data from Zero Waste Scotland estimates that every 1kg of food waste sent to landfill produces the same carbon emissions as 25,000 500ml bottles . Pound-for-pound, food waste causes far more damage to the environment than food packaging waste ever could. And meat and fish are among the categories responsible for the highest emissions from household food waste , making shelf life and product protection especially important in protein packaging.

To learn more about how Europe-wide packaging reforms will impact your business, read our blogs on the evolution of EPR reforms and the introduction of PPWR.

This is driving rapid change in the vacuum food packaging market. Any businesses that are solely focused on reducing plastic risk being left behind. Success now hinges on using the right materials in a more considered way, ensuring each pack has a clear end-of-life route, strong performance, and a lower overall environmental impact.

For years, the tension between packaging and food waste has resulted in a range of material experiments, including laminated and hybrid structures designed to balance stiffness, seal integrity, shelf appeal, and barrier performance. Some have been successful, others less so. But the market is now converging around recyclable mono PET formats, particularly those that can incorporate recycled PET.

The result is a pack that responds to multiple pressures at once, meeting market demands for more versatile solutions. It supports premium presentation through strong product visibility. It helps protect food during transport and handling through secure, leakproof performance. It enables shallow pack formats that improve logistics efficiency. And, crucially, it supports a move away from harder-to-recycle structures towards circular PET packaging models, future-proofing it in an increasingly recycling-centric market.

Nowhere is this more important than in the fish category.

To address these needs, traditional fish packaging formats have historically used metallised boards or mixed-material structures. The problem is that these structures are difficult to recycle, making them an unwanted compromise that does not align with evolving packaging standards.

The industry is now moving away from those hybrid formats and towards clear, recyclable plastic solutions that offer stronger alignment with retailer expectations and recycling infrastructure. This shift is not cosmetic. Retailers are actively removing non-recyclable packaging formats from shelves, and suppliers that cannot demonstrate progress risk being left behind.

A key feature is kp Zapora^® advanced retention-chamber geometry. Replacing the need for absorbent pads and adhesives, which complicate the end-of-life recycling process, this unique material structure guides released juices away from the product surface into dedicated micro-vacuum retention zones. This helps reduce liquid build-up, supports leak prevention during distribution and handling, and creates a cleaner, more appealing product presentation on shelf.

This is the direction protein packaging is heading: not towards less packaging at any cost, but towards better packaging design that protects more, wastes less, recycles easily, and supports carbon reduction.

For brands, processors, and retailers, kp Evolve^® Fish Boards represent a strategic advancement in packaging for processed fish. They bring together performance, product protection and recyclability in a single, scalable solution designed for today’s regulatory and commercial landscape.

In a market where freshness, safety, circularity, and compliance are increasingly inseparable, kp Evolve^® Fish Boards set a new standard for vacuum packaging – one that is ready to scale with the evolving demands of the protein value chain.