中文The artience Group, through its packaging subsidiary Toyo Ink Co, and DIC Corporation have announced the development of Japan’s first “common industry protocol” to standardise test procedures, evaluation criteria and reporting formats for deinking and debonding in the material recycling of flexible film packaging. The agreement is a notable breakthrough for a market that has long struggled to compare recyclability claims across companies and materials.
Flexible packaging is used extensively in food, daily necessities and pharmaceuticals because it protects contents well while cutting weight and transport cost. But it is composed of multiple materials — films, printing inks and laminating adhesives — which makes recycling harder. Two processes are critical for high-quality material recycling: deinking, the removal of printed ink, and debonding, the separation of layered films. Until now, Japan evaluated these using proprietary test conditions and criteria, so results from one company could not be reliably compared with another’s. That fragmentation hindered recyclability assessment during the design phase and complicated information sharing across the supply chain.
The new protocol establishes a unified environment where stakeholders — converters, brand owners and recyclers — can evaluate and compare recyclability against shared domestic standards. It comprises three core elements. Test Procedures clarify the equipment, test conditions, material handling and operational steps to improve reproducibility within Japanese testing environments. Evaluation Criteria set objective standards for assessing deinking and debonding efficiency and the resulting quality of recycled plastic. Reporting Format standardises test conditions and results into a single layout, smoothing information exchange among domestic stakeholders.
For converters, adoption streamlines the selection of printing and processing conditions and materials that prioritise recyclability. For brand owners, it enables choosing highly recyclable packaging based on objective, reliable data. For recyclers, it allows appropriate processing conditions to be set from material characteristics, lifting the quality of recycled plastic. In short, the protocol turns recyclability from a soft aspiration into a measurable, design-stage input.
The backdrop is policy as much as technology. Fluctuating resource prices and rising geopolitical risk have intensified the imperative to repurpose used plastics as resources, and the Japanese government has positioned the circular economy as a key growth strategy. Within packaging, demand is mounting for designs that recycle more easily and for wider use of high-quality recycled plastics. artience and DIC, both printing-ink manufacturers, developed the protocol by pooling expertise in inks, laminating adhesives and recycling technologies — deliberately breaking competitive boundaries to address Japan’s specific recycling infrastructure.
The two firms will keep refining the protocol’s accuracy and practicality using insights from real packaging materials and Japanese recycling processes, and will promote a framework where recyclability can be discussed and evaluated across the entire domestic chain, from design and manufacturing to collection and recycling. They will showcase the Protocol at their respective booths during Tokyo Pack 2026 and invite industry stakeholders in Japan to adopt it, with the aim of establishing it as the standard for recyclability assessment in flexible packaging.
The protocol’s ultimate value depends on uptake. A measurement language only delivers circular-economy gains if converters, brand owners and recyclers actually use it. But by agreeing on shared methods first, artience and DIC have removed the most basic obstacle — the inability to compare — and given Japan’s film-packaging sector a foundation it previously lacked.
Japan’s packaging value chain has long wrestled with fragmented recycling standards that made cross-company comparison difficult, and by agreeing on shared test procedures, evaluation criteria and reporting formats, artience and DIC are effectively building the measurement language the local circular economy needs. The protocol’s true test will be adoption. The more converters and recyclers use it, the more design-stage decisions can be made on comparable data rather than proprietary claims. There is a policy tailwind as well. Fluctuating resource prices and geopolitical risk have intensified the imperative to repurpose used plastics, and the Japanese government has positioned the circular economy as a key growth strategy, raising demand for designs that recycle more easily and for wider use of high-quality recycled plastics. By pooling expertise in inks, laminating adhesives and recycling technologies, deliberately crossing competitive boundaries, the two firms addressed Japan’s specific infrastructure rather than importing a foreign standard. Showcasing the protocol at Tokyo Pack 2026 and inviting stakeholders to adopt it is the next step toward making it the default frame for recyclability assessment in Japanese flexible packaging. The deeper win is cultural. When rivals agree on how to measure, the industry stops arguing about method and starts competing on outcomes, which is precisely what a functioning circular economy requires.
The protocol also has an export dimension. Japanese flexible packaging films are traded and converted well beyond the domestic market, so a standard that makes recyclability comparable at home strengthens the case for those materials abroad, where importers increasingly ask for evidence of circular design. By publishing the three core elements, test procedures, evaluation criteria and reporting format, artience and DIC have made the method legible to foreign partners rather than locking it inside a private specification. That openness could help Japanese converters win business from multinational brand owners with global recycling commitments. The Tokyo Pack 2026 showcase is the obvious venue to demonstrate the protocol in practice, moving it from document to demonstrable workflow and giving recyclers a concrete basis to feed results back into the next revision of the standard.
