Michelman: How patience and collaboration improved the paper cup

Modern businesses across sectors often favour quick wins: quarterly spikes, aggressive valuations, and impatient pivots that target emerging trends. However, true structural innovation within the packaging industry operates on a completely different temporal scale. Engineering alternative chemical coatings that can dismantle decades of plastic reliance requires deep capital patience, intensive material testing, and a corporate willingness to look past immediate returns.

To achieve this, Michelman has consistently invested heavily in fundamental science, maintaining a dedicated network of material scientists and chemists across its global technology centers in the US, Europe, and Asia whose sole focus is solving long-term polymer challenges. This generational approach to engineering at Michelman is redefining how material providers develop sustainable alternatives.

This dedication to the long game is best crystallised in the developmental journey of the disposable paper coffee cup at Michelman, a 77-year-old specialty chemical company with roots in Cincinnati, USA and a significant footprint in Mumbai. For 15 years, the enterprise nurtured a product line that would eventually lead to the Michem Coat 9250 Series, a portfolio of water-based coatings designed to make paper cups recyclable by replacing the traditional polyethylene plastic liner. In the early days of development, the consumer was largely unaware of the environmental catastrophe caused by billions of non-recyclable coffee cups ending up in landfills, and the financial premium for sustainable water-based coatings was highly prohibitive.

Steve Shifman, president and chief executive officer of Michelman, highlighted how the private structure of a family business provides the unique financial insulation required to protect long-term research and development pipelines. "We are planning for the next 75. If we were part of a public company or a private equity-backed company, this might have been put to bed twelve years ago. The primary advantage of being a family-owned business is not independence, but a mandate to think in decades, not quarters," he said.

This long timeline proves that creating a great technology isn't enough to guarantee market success. A breakthrough coating can sit unused on a laboratory shelf for years if the rest of the industry isn't ready for it. For a sustainable packaging material to actually scale up, the entire supply chain—from paper mills to machine manufacturers—must change and adapt together.