Recycle-ready shredded cheese packaging wins two WorldStar awards

Amcor has won two WorldStar Global Packaging Awards 2026 for its AmPrima® Recycle-Ready packaging for shredded cheese. The awards, presented by the World Packaging Organisation, recognised the solution in both the Food and Packaging Materials and Components categories.

The award-winning packaging brings together the expertise of Amcor’s Asia Pacific and North American teams, and is now in market with Fonterra Oceania, one of the region’s leading dairy producers. The solution is used for shredded cheese applications in both retail and foodservice markets.

Designed to meet Australasian soft plastics recycling standards, the packaging is permitted to carry the “Check Locally” logo under the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL). The Perfect Italiano shredded cheese pack now features this logo in Australia.

Fonterra Oceania GM Sustainability, Rosie Cotter, said that Fonterra’s partnership with Amcor is an important step forward in its commitment to delivering more sustainable packaging solutions for consumers.

“By transitioning our shredded cheese range including well-known brands such as Perfect Italiano to Amcor’s AmPrima recycle ready packaging, we’re helping to ensure more of our packaging can be recycled after use, while maintaining the high product quality our customers expect.

“With AmPrima now carrying the Australian Recycling Label’s Check Locally mark on pack, shoppers can make clearer, more informed recycling decisions. Importantly, this may remove an estimated 270 tonnes of non-recyclable material from the Australian market every year, representing a meaningful shift toward our packaging sustainability goals,” Rosie said.

“Shredded cheese packaging is a technically demanding flexible packaging format. It needs strong pack integrity, high barrier performance, reliable sealing and fast production speeds. That’s why it’s usually made with multiple materials that can’t be recycled,” said Phil Van Houts, R&D Director ANZ, Amcor Flexibles Asia Pacific.

“With AmPrima, we’ve created a simple, recycle-ready solution. It’s a step forward that helps our customers make the transition without changing how they operate, while maintaining pack performance, appearance and food-grade standards.”

For shredded cheese applications, AmPrima Recycle-Ready packaging replaces traditional structures that rely on materials such as PET or PVDC with a mono-material polyethylene film. The solution is engineered to deliver the barrier, sealing and food-grade performance required to protect shredded cheese, while maintaining pack integrity on high-speed production lines. The solution was previously awarded Silver at the 2025 Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design Awards (PIDA), qualifying it for WorldStar entry.

This article was originally published by Amcor.