At the 13th Speciality Films & Flexible Packaging Global Summit & Exhibition (Elite Plus), held on 26–27 August 2026 at the Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai, Mamata Machinery took the stage as a Prestigious Platinum Partner and used it to address a problem the entire industry has been circling for years: the lack of a truly recyclable flexible film.
Our President, Mr. V. Rajashekar, presented RecTech™ a recyclable mono-material packaging technology developed in-house — to an audience of brand owners, converters, recyclers, and policymakers.
The Problem: Flexible Packaging's Recycling Gap
Flexible packaging is the backbone of India's packaging industry. According to figures shared in the presentation, India's flexible packaging market currently stands at $20.5 billion, growing at 11.5% annually, and is estimated to surpass $35 billion by 2030. Flexible formats account for roughly 70–75% of India's total plastic packaging usage driven largely by demand from the FMCG sector, which values flexible packaging for its versatility.
But that scale comes with a cost. To meet demand, the industry has relied on multi-layer plastic (MLP) structures compositions that deliver strong barrier performance but are largely non-recyclable. The result: a growing volume of flexible packaging waste that has no viable end-of-life pathway, much of it ending up in landfill.
Regulation is catching up. India's Plastic Waste Management Rules now mandate a minimum percentage of recycled content in flexible packaging, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks alongside recycled-content mandates are tightening across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
Other packaging categories have already solved this. PET bottles are collected and reprocessed into PET bottles again. Paper-based packaging has a mature recovery chain. Even milk pouches in India a flexible format have cracked the problem, because the structure was standardized enough to be collected and reprocessed at scale.
Flexible-to-flexible recycling, however, has lagged behind not because a solution wasn't possible, but because no standard, harmonized film structure existed to give end-of-life value to the material.
Four Conditions for a Real Solution
Solving flexible-film recyclability, as outlined in the presentation, isn't a single-variable problem. It requires addressing four things at once:
- A standard recipe or structure — ideally a mono-material substrate, with roughly 90% of the structure falling within a single material family.
- Functionality — the recyclable structure must deliver barrier and performance levels comparable to legacy multi-material laminates.
- Affordability — the cost delta versus existing structures has to stay within a range brand owners and consumers can absorb.
- Scalable supply chain — the solution needs to be producible at industrial scale, not just in a lab.
Solve only one or two of these, and the knot gets tighter rather than looser. Mamata’s R&D and technical teams set out to solve all four together.
Introducing RecTech™
RecTech™ is Mamata Machinery's recyclable mono-material packaging technology — a 9-layer, co-extruded mono-material film that can be laminated with reverse-print BOPP.Three design choices make it work:
A true mono-material substrate, engineered rather than adapted from existing multi-material formats.
Compatibility with post-consumer recycled (PCR) content, encapsulated without compromising the outer sealing layers — meaning recycled input doesn't come at the cost of performance.
An ultra-thin EVOH barrier layer, delivering barrier performance reported to exceed legacy PET-PE structures.
RecTech™ has received barrier-performance certification from the Indian Institute of Packaging (Kolkata) and Mitsubishi Chemical (Singapore), and recyclability certification from SIPC (India) and HDPE Cycles (Europe), with APR (US) certification underway.
RecTech™ cuts carbon footprint by 25–38% versus standard PET-PE structures across material, manufacturing, and end-of-life stages, at a cost delta of approximately 5% versus conventional PET-PE laminate. Under India's EPR framework, RecTech™ qualifies as Category 2 packaging rather than Category 3 — a classification that means lower cost and transport cost, and far lower exposure to non-compliance penalties.
Built on Existing Machinery, Not a New Supply Chain
A key design principle behind RecTech™ is that it doesn't ask the industry to rebuild its infrastructure. It's engineered to work with Mamata's existing co-extrusion film technology and converting machinery — the same pouch-making and bag-making equipment already in use across brand owners' and converters' operations.
That means RecTech™ can move into existing production lines rather than requiring an entirely new value chain — a meaningful distinction for an industry where capital equipment cycles are long.
Where RecTech™ Can Be Used Today
RecTech™ is built to replace flexible PET-PE structures up to 70 microns in thickness across a wide range of applications, including:
- Food packaging (pouches, standard packs, lamination use)
- Personal care
- Home care
- Agriculture
- Pet food
This breadth of application matters to us — RecTech™ isn’t a niche substitute for one packaging format, but a platform designed to address the majority of flexible film use cases currently reliant on non-recyclable structures.
RecTech™ is our ongoing work in recyclable flexible packaging technology. To learn more about RecTech™ or discuss integration into your production line, visit www.mamata.com.
