Time for Tea!
Brew, enjoy, recycle. For just under three years now, tea enthusiasts have been able to dispose of the packaging used for Leros herbal tea as wastepaper – thanks to NexFlex® packaging paper products from Koehler Paper. Made from renewable raw materials, these products are the environmentally conscious alternative for a broad variety of packaging solutions.
Paper packaging instead of plastic? Not a problem for Czech tea producer Leros. One of its first customers from the tea industry, the storied company has been working with Koehler Paper for years now, and packing its tea bags in sustainable paper – for an environmentally friendly treat.
Before this change, the company was using paper with a non-recyclable polyethylene coating for its tea bag envelopes. “That particular packaging material was simply not acceptable for us anymore,” says Veronika Štýblová, who works as a Packaging Material Buyer at Leros. An understandable conclusion – sustainability plays a key role for a company that makes herbal teas from natural ingredients. Moreover, increasingly environmentally conscious consumers are attaching more and more importance not just to organic tea, but to environmentally friendly packaging as well. “We wanted an ecological solution that would produce less plastic waste,” Štýblová explains.
million tea packs, with ten tea bags each, were produced by Leros in 2024. Some of the most popular varieties include “Vitamin C Immunity,” “Malinka for Children,” and “Strawberry Tea Party.”
Next gen packaging
“If we truly want sustainability, then we need to double down on using packaging made of recyclable materials,” explains Sven Lehmann, Sales Manager for the Eastern European market at Koehler Paper. This is why the papermaker developed its NexFlex® product range – a new generation of flexible packaging paper offerings. They can be used for countless food and non-food packaging applications, are made of renewable raw materials, have excellent recyclability properties, and are produced with green energy generated by the company itself.
However, sustainability cannot come at the expense of functionality. “First and foremost, we use packaging to protect products,” Lehmann explains. And that is exactly what Koehler NexPlus® Seal Pure, the product used by Leros, does. The barrier paper shields tea bags from external elements such as oxygen and UV radiation while protecting the aroma of the herbs inside.
And yet protection is only one part of the equation. Technical requirements are also a crucial part of the whole. “Tea production is a cutting-edge thing – I can assure you that looking at their high-tech machines in action leaves a huge impression,” Lehmann stresses. Among other things, this means that the paper used needs to be heat-sealable so that the corresponding packaging can be sealed tight on three sides using pressure and heat. Moreover, the process requires enormous mechanical stability in order to ensure that the paper will run smoothly through the production systems – ideally the same machines that previously processed the plastic packaging. Lehmann draws a comparison: “It’s like wanting to switch from a gas car to an electric one, but from the same tried-and-true automaker.”
We wanted an ecological solution that would produce less plastic waste.
We wanted an ecological solution that would produce less plastic waste.
Packaging Material Buyer at Leros
Ready, test, go!
Before the new tea packaging was launched, Leros tested the material over a period of five months in a three-stage process, with the first step revolving around paper and laboratory work. “At that point, no one actually had any physical material in their hands, and no machines were running yet,” Lehmann explains. Materials that will be in contact with food need to meet stringent guidelines – a challenge that Koehler had already considered when developing its paper. Once Leros had some initial samples on hand, they took them to their own laboratories and tested whether the paper met all the stringent requirements. Testing ran for three months: Does the material remain stable? Do the herbs cause stains? Does the tea’s aroma remain intact? “After extensive analyses, it was clear: The material had everything we needed,” Štýblová recalls. This was followed by a real-life test on the production system – using a small paper roll at first. Then, once everything had gone smoothly, small-scale and large-scale production testing followed without the need for any major changes. Finally, after less than five months, the company gave the green light for the environmentally friendly new tea packaging.
If we truly want sustainability, then we need to double down on using packaging made of recyclable materials.
If we truly want sustainability, then we need to double down on using packaging made of recyclable materials.
Sales Manager for the Eastern European market at Koehler
Sharing success
It was not just the paper’s quality that ensured a frictionless switchover – thorough preparation, open communications, and close teamwork all played a vital role as well. In order to make the process easier, Koehler provided a guideline that took the Leros team through everything step by step. “Once this preparation work was done, we were able to get cracking on the machines,” Lehmann explains.
In addition to this, Koehler provided on-site support for the switchover. During a visit to the Czech town of Strážnice, the Koehler and Leros teams had extensive discussions and jointly defined the next steps to be taken. “At first, we were positively surprised by the fact that the people at Koehler wanted to come in person and make sure everything was OK – we’d never had that kind of direct contact with a papermaker before,” Štýblová recalls. She goes on to add that this kind of thing is normally discussed with the suppliers of the printed material or the print shop. “Ultimately, it allowed us to talk about technical questions directly, and that kind of close collaboration was just great.”
Enjoying tea sustainably: What’s not to like?
And Leros’ customers? They continue to enjoy their tea in the quality they are accustomed to – all while helping protect the environment. And the 7.5 million tea packs that Leros produced in 2024 amply demonstrate how much these customers appreciate the tea producer’s focus on sustainability. The company is confident that demand will continue to grow, and accordingly invested in a new and even faster tea packaging machine for 2025. “Our customers simply love our tea,” Štýblová says, smiling. “And their positive feedback gives us all the more reason to continue to bet on unrivaled quality and sustainability.”
From A to tea!
Facts about the global tea market
metric tons of tea were produced worldwide in 2022. This means that tea harvest volumes have grown worldwide over the past few decades. China and India are two of the biggest tea producers. 1
metric tons of plastic a year could be eliminated in Europe alone if the plastic in tea envelopes was to be replaced with paper. 2
Germany is Europe’s biggest market for fruit and herbal teas. However, these varieties are becoming increasingly popular in many other Western European countries as well. 3
Sources:
1 Statista https://de.statista.com
2 Internal market data from Euromonitor Data and product management assumptions
3 Euromonitor International
