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TemperPack has secured investment from Closed Loop Partners to expand its ClimaCell manufacturing operation to its west coast facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, US.The $4.5m funding move follows the launch of TemperPack’s first production line of ClimaCell, a curbside recyclable insulation product, in its Richmond-based facility.ClimaCell, which is designed for perishable shipments in the food and pharmaceuticals industries, helps reduce GHG emissions over EPS used in insulated shipping.
“Insulation performance is paramount in the cold chain industry, so we engineered ClimaCell to perform on par with EPS on an inch per inch basis.”TemperPack research and development director Michael Scipione said: “When we were initially developing this new type of insulation, we looked at a range of recyclable materials, and ultimately landed on a paper-based design due to its high recyclability rate compared to plastic.“Insulation performance is paramount in the cold chain industry, so we engineered ClimaCell to perform on par with EPS on an inch per inch basis.”The expansion of ClimaCell to TemperPack’s Las Vegas location will allow reduce contamination at Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs).Closed Loop Fund Operations Due Diligence vice-president Bob Milligan said: “From our MRF testing, we’ve seen that TemperPack’s ClimaCell packaging can greatly reduce the burden of Styrofoam ending up in the recycling streams.”The company noted that the insulated packaging currently available in the market fails to pass the MRF sorting tests and ultimately ends up in a landfill.Milligan added: “The [ClimaCell] packaging has proven to make it through the OCC lines at MRFs.”Closed Loop Partners invests in sustainable consumer goods, recycling technologies and the development of the circular economy.TemperPack co-CEO and co-founder Brian Powers stated that the manufacturing operation will make the company more cost competitive against EPS.