Banyan Nation walks the talk on sustainability
With a firm foothold in rigid packaging, the company is now expanding into flexible films, punches, and other formats, while keeping its vision unchanged.
08 Sep 2025 | By Sai Deepthi P
Mani Vajipey traced Banyan Nation’s journey from rigid to flexible packaging, recalling how the company had pioneered washing technologies that allowed billions of packages across India to be made from recycled plastics.
He noted that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) had fundamentally shifted industry behaviour. The informal sector, once fragmented, was now actively adopting segregation techniques. Meanwhile, brand managers had moved from questioning *if* recycled content was necessary, to asking *how much and by when*. He pointed to compliance figures, highlighting that over 91% of registered companies were filing their EPR action plans or returns, a sign of widespread adoption.
Addressing concerns on raw material, he clarified that availability would not be a constraint for India. Even by 2030, supply ratios would remain robust — 5.7:1 for HDPE and 5.4:1 for PP. Instead, the persistent challenges lay in informal value chains and complex packaging streams. Banyan had already solved these issues for rigid packaging, and the company aimed to extend the same solutions to flexibles.
In flexible packaging, however, he admitted that additional hurdles persisted — fragmented supply chains, cross-resin contamination, and the absence of advanced recycling and cleaning technologies. Supply chain mastery alone, he stressed, was insufficient. The industry faced three technical barriers: odor migration that risks entire batches, persistent ink systems, and adhesive contamination. These, he argued, were exactly where Banyan had an advantage. Having resolved similar challenges in rigid packaging, the company had completed proof-of-concepts across sectors and invested in a sophisticated material characterisation lab.
He concluded on a forward-looking note, declaring that “the time for flexible packaging recycling is now.” According to him, premature concerns on pricing should give way to adoption and collective innovation.
The summit came full circle when one of Banyan Nation’s clients, Aishvarya Murali, founder of Tuco Kids, spoke on the final panel on emerging brands revolutionising packaging. She acknowledged how Banyan’s solutions in recycled plastics had been instrumental in shaping Tuco Kids’ journey, enabling the brand to adopt fully recycled packaging from its inception.