Heinz Partners With Pulpex To Develop The First 'Paper' Ketchup Bottle

To the casual observer, it would seem that there isn’t much room to innovate when it comes to ketchup. Tomato ketchup, sometimes called catsup, has been around since the early 1800s, with previous versions of the sauce using everything from mushrooms to fish. By 1876, Heinz got into the catsup game and continues to innovate on the condiment, recently developing a way to grow tomatoes and make the pantry staple on Mars.

However, Heinz’s latest ketchup development is less celestial and aims to address a very Earthly problem—plastic pollution. The firm has announced a partnership with sustainable packaging technology firm Pulpex to develop the first molded paper bottle in the sauce category.

Pulpex and Heinz expect the paper bottles made from sustainably sourced wood fiber to be “widely and readily recyclable” in paper waste streams. It remains unclear whether the bottle will be completely plastic-free. When asked by Dieline if the paper bottles would be plastic-free, Heinz responded by saying the paper bottle would be free from PET, HDPE, and BPA. Heinz also did not rule out using polypropylene for components such as the cap and described the inside coating as being “food grade.”

“Packaging waste is an industry-wide challenge that we must all do our part to address,” Kraft Heinz CEO Miguel Patricio said in a press release. “That is why we are committed to taking steps to explore sustainable packaging solutions across our brands at Kraft Heinz, offering consumers more choices. This new Heinz bottle is one example of how we are applying creativity and innovation to explore new ways to provide consumers with the products they know and love while also thinking sustainably.”

The new bottles are in the early prototyping stage, and Heinz has no consumer launch date yet.