Fazer unveils bread bag made partly of oat hulls

The result of years of work and collaboration with companies, researchers and educational institutions, the packaging will take bread-lovers a step closer to an environmentally friendly daily life, according to Fazer.

A quarter of the material is made of oat hulls, and the entire packaging can be recycled as cardboard.

“Initially the oat-hull bread bag felt almost impossible to produce,” revealed Piia Soininen-Tengvall, the director of packaging development and design at Fazer Bakery Finland. “Using oat hulls as the raw material for food packaging is challenging because the product must remain fresh. The bag must be resistant to vapour in order to protect the bread from going to waste.”

The food industry company said the innovation is part of its sustainable packaging programme, which consists of three focus areas: reducing the amount of packaging material used, improving the recyclability of packaging and developing completely new ecological packagings.

The oat-hull bag is only the start, promised Jarkko Arrajoki, the managing director of Fazer Mills Finland.

“Oats can be used for so many purposes and in different ways. Currently, we are discussing how oat hulls could be used more widely in the production of paper and packaging,” he revealed. “We don’t want to waste one husk of oats.”