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Technology and innovation

Excellence – Engineered. Solutions – Delivered.

Our innovation capabilities enable us to address multiple customer needs and to respond to fast-changing consumer trends. We draw on the unmatched flexibility of our system to create modular solutions which give customers the optionality they need. We spend approximately 3% of sales on R&D and our innovations benefit from patent protection.

Our unique technology

The unique advantages of the SIG offer lie in our proprietary filling technology and sleeve-based system. We offer a range of packaging formats, volumes and opening solutions, providing our customers with more than 270 packaging options. Taking advantage of our differentiated filling capabilities, customers currently fill more than 10,000 food and beverage products into our packs. The flexibility of our system limits changeover downtime and results in better asset utilisation and a lower total cost of ownership for many customers. As well as a high level of reliability, our system offers low waste rates for both the packaging and the finished product.

Expanding our R&D footprint

We have steadily expanded our global R&D network which began with the Tech Centre in Linnich, Germany. In 2018 we opened our Tech Centre in Suzhou, China, which is enabling us to respond faster to the typically rapid innovation cycles in the APAC region.

In 2021 we added another Tech Centre, this time in Dubai to serve the Middle East and Africa region. This Centre opens up new opportunities for the food and beverage industry through innovative technologies for processing and filling. The Centre’s innovative quality measurement system, advanced testing equipment and future digital technology capacities allow faster development and validation of new products and packaging.

Bringing new nutrition solutions to market

The new Tech Centre in Dubai is an additional base for SIG Accelerator and SIGCUBATOR, two turnkey solutions that fast-track innovative ideas to market, offering support for existing customers and food and beverage start-ups. These programmes bring SIG’s expertise, filling capabilities and industry network to new talent and innovative concepts. Small companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs often do not have sufficient volume to produce large batches with co-manufacturers. By testing and commercially filling their products in SIG’s combiLab, they can prepare and launch their products into the market.

More than

10,000

food and beverage products

Benefits for customers and the environment

Next generation filling technology

Our new SIG NEO filling machine launched in November brings a range of operational and environmental benefits to customers (see story Investing in innovation). With a speed of up to 18,000 packs per hour, SIG NEO is the world’s fastest filling machine for family-size carton packs. It also has a 25% lower carbon footprint per filled pack compared with SIG’s current generation filling machines for family-size packs, due to low waste rates and reduced consumption of water and other utilities.

More than

270

packaging options

3

Tech Centres

Enhanced sustainability formats

We enable customers to respond to growing environmental concerns by offering fully renewable packaging. We launched the industry’s first aluminium-free solution – ECOPLUS – in 2009, followed by SIGNATURE 100 in 2017, the world’s first ever carton pack entirely linked to plant-based materials (see story Accelerating climate action). We are also able to replace fossil-based polyethylene with plant-based material via a mass-balance system and we were the first company to offer beverage cartons with circular polymers made from recycled post-consumer plastic waste.

SIGNATURE EVO: Aluminium-free packaging with full barrier protection

ECOPLUS and SIGNATURE 100 are both for use with dairy products only. Our ambition was to develop an aluminium-free pack that maintains the full barrier properties required to preserve oxygen-sensitive products such as juices. With the launch of SIGNATURE EVO in early 2022, we have achieved this ambition. SIGNATURE EVO offers a full barrier aluminium-free solution for both liquid dairy products and non-carbonated soft drinks – and it is available in portion-pack sizes. Later in 2022, it will also be available as SIGNATURE EVO 100 with the polymers linked to forest-based renewable material.