Reduce HDPE and PP container material up to 30% with YUPO LightWeighting-IML

YUPO's new substrate for In-Mold Labeling (IML) enables brand owners to reduce the material content of HDPE bottles by 10–30% while maintaining packaging integrity and performance.

Across a portfolio of one billion 1–5 L bottles, this material reduction could lower Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees by approximately $1 million annually for manufacturers in Oregon, Colorado, and California. It could also save an estimated $28 million in resin, reduce plastic use by approximately 19,000 tonnes, and cut CO₂ emissions by approximately 30,000 tonnes per year.

Key Features and Unique Advantages • Less virgin plastic per bottle:10–30% weight reduction: the structural label allows wall thickness to be reduced across the 1–5 L blow-molded HDPE formats used in home care, beverages, lubricants and lawn & garden. In a commercial case (50 oz bottle, 10 million bottles/year, 100 g), a 10% reduction removes 100tonnes of resin per year on a single Stock Keeping Unit. • No trade-off between weight and strength: both failure modes of lightweighting – buckling under top load and cracking on drop - are addressed by the new IML substrate, without incremental resin, geometry redesign or new tooling. • Structural integrity maintained – top load: the substrate fuses with the resin during molding and acts as a reinforcing layer, improving panel stiffness and vertical compression performance to compensate for the thinner wall. Top load is measured following ASTM D2659 (push speed 50 mm/min, 23 °C / 50% RH), addressing the deformation and buckling that normally set the floor on lightweighting. • Drop-test proven – shock distribution on drop: the new substrate distributes impact energy, which conventional IML does not. In YUPO lab testing, lightweighted bottles retained drop performance, whereas conventional IML withstood 5 ft at 0.90 mm wall thickness. [see video below]. • Lower material cost: less resin per bottle converts directly into bottle cost. An illustrative 128 g → 115 g home-care HDPE bottle saves $1.89 million per year at 100 million bottles, and a 10% reduction across a 1 billion bottle/year laundry portfolio corresponds to 19,300 t of resin and $26.4 million of bottle cost. • Lower EPR fees, ahead of US policy expansion: US packaging EPR fees are charged on packaging weight, so every gram removed shrinks the base fee. Oregon is already invoicing, Colorado invoices from 2026 and California follows under SB 54, with colored HDPE base fees of $0.32/lb, $0.24/lb and $0.13/lb respectively (Circular Action Alliance schedules). • Progress against published sustainability goals: lightweighting cuts virgin plastic use and packaging carbon at the same time (APR life-cycle factors of 1.89 kg CO₂e/kg for virgin and 0.56 kg CO₂e/kg for PCR HDPE). A 10% reduction on a 1 billion bottle/year portfolio corresponds to 19k tonnes of virgin plastic and around 3.3% within the 50% reduction target if brand consumes 566k of virgin plastic. • Established supplier with in-house validation: YUPO pioneered the IML-B market and its substrates are the standard among blow molders and printers, so adoption runs through the converter base already in place. Drop testing and bottle strength evaluation are performed in YUPO’s own laboratory, supported by extensive molding and printing experience and a broad network of molders and printers.