Petropack
https://petropack.com/en/About
At Petropack, we are the largest converter of flexible packaging in the region, with nearly 40 years of experience in the design and manufacture of high value-added packaging. Our commitment is to meet the needs and the highest standards of our clients. Petropack is the ideal partner for brands looking to stand out in a competitive market by ensuring the protection of the freshness and flavor of pet food.
We offer a wide range of packaging solutions, including bags in various formats, laminates, and customized films. Our options not only guarantee optimal product preservation but also capture the consumer's visual attention. We understand that bag design is a key factor in the purchasing decision, which is why at Petropack we ensure the highest quality and definition in flexographic printing in the market.
Committed to sustainability, we use eco-friendly materials, ensuring that our solutions are both effective and environmentally responsible. Additionally, we have a plant dedicated exclusively to recycling. Our packaging is ideal for all types of pet foods, from kibbles to treats.
We provide our clients with cutting-edge machinery technology, as well as ongoing support, innovation, technical assistance, and exceptional service. This has allowed us to become leaders in the production of flexible packaging for pet food, not only in Argentina but throughout the region. We operate four production plants located in Paraná, Entre Ríos.
Products
Company News
Packaging
5+ MIN
01/09/2026
Circularity Without Compromising Performance: Engineering Solutions for Flexible Pet Food Packaging
Far from being competing objectives, circularity and performance can reinforce one another when packaging is analyzed as an integrated functional system, designed to meet specific technical requirements throughout the value chain, from packaging to final consumption.
Circularity Does Not Mean Substitution: It Is Redesign
When discussing circularity in flexible packaging, several strategies are often mentioned: downgauging, weight reduction, incorporation of recycled content, migration toward mono-material structures, implementation of more efficient processes, and waste reduction initiatives. While all of these are valuable tools, they are insufficient when applied in isolation.
Every component within a flexible package serves one or more specific technical functions. Consequently, any structural modification has technical implications that must be analyzed and addressed. The most common mistake is attempting to simplify a package without understanding why it was designed that way in the first place.
In the pet food segment, where products present unique challenges related to stability, logistics, and consumer use, this approach becomes particularly critical. Pet food—especially dry formulations with high fat content—is highly sensitive to oxidation, moisture uptake, and aroma loss, all of which directly impact the consumer's acceptance.
The Starting Point: Understanding Packaging's Technical Function
Every effective redesign begins with a deep understanding of the package's primary function. In pet food applications, packaging plays a fundamental role in preserving product quality, shelf life, and user experience.
Its key technical functions include:
Oxygen barrier: Essential for preventing fat oxidation and preserving palatability.
Water vapor barrier: Necessary to avoid caking, nutritional degradation, and microbial growth.
Mechanical resistance: Required to withstand impacts, stacking loads, and intensive logistics handling.
Seal integrity: Critical to ensuring hermetic protection throughout the product's shelf life.
Consumer functionality: Including controlled opening features and resealable systems that help reduce product waste.
Packaging performance does not depend on a single material but rather on the balance among all of these functions. This is precisely where technological innovation plays a decisive role.
Product Protection: New Architectures for Long-Standing Challenges
Regarding barrier and product protection, advances in coextrusion technologies have enabled the development of polyethylene-based structures with enhanced functional properties that significantly reduce grease migration, oxygen transmission, and aroma exchange. These solutions rely on multilayer architectures in which different resins perform specific functions within the structure.
Incorporating barrier copolymers such as EVOH, even at relatively low concentrations, allows manufacturers to achieve protection levels comparable to those of traditional multi-material structures. Historically, materials, such as BOPET and BOPA, have been used to provide rigidity and barrier performance, but they require lamination with polyethylene to deliver sealability and mechanical strength. While technically effective, these combinations present significant challenges for recycling.
Multilayer polyethylene structures can now integrate barrier performance, mechanical strength, sealing properties, optical characteristics, and processability within a single system, advancing toward mono-material configurations that are more compatible with mechanical recycling streams and with the design-for-circularity guidelines increasingly adopted by global brands.
Likewise, the development of machine-direction orientation (MDO) processes applied to high-density polyethylene has created the potential to replace traditionally oriented films, such as BOPP, while maintaining adequate stiffness and further improving overall package circularity.
Mechanical Strength and Seal Integrity: Beyond Packaging Thickness
When discussing sustainability, thickness reduction is often one of the first strategies considered. However, reducing gauge without redesigning the structure is a reliable recipe for failure. In pet food packaging, resistance to tearing, puncture, and deformation is critical to maintaining package integrity throughout its entire life cycle.
The phenomenon known as dimpling—the deformation of the package caused by kibble pressure, particularly in bags located at the bottom of a pallet—requires structures to absorb loads without compromising package integrity or seal performance. These stresses are not always replicated in standard laboratory tests, making it essential to consider real-world storage and distribution conditions.
This requires not only a robust film structure but also reliable seals to withstand demanding stacking, transportation, and handling environments. Furthermore, during storage and distribution, the friction coefficient of the outer surface becomes increasingly important for maintaining stable pallet loads and preventing slippage or pallet collapse.
Multilayer coextruded architectures allow functions to be redistributed among layers, incorporating engineered resins where needed, compensating for gauge reductions, and optimizing costs without sacrificing performance.
Functionality and Waste Reduction
Circularity extends beyond packaging materials—it also encompasses how consumers interact with the package. In this regard, controlled-opening and resealable closure systems play a key role in reducing food waste by helping preserve product quality after opening and extending shelf life in the home.
Today, a variety of front, perimeter, and traditional closure solutions are available, along with easy-open systems designed to enhance the consumer experience without compromising package integrity or recyclability. Integrating these features from the initial design stage, rather than adding them later, is essential for achieving the right balance between usability, technical performance, and sustainability.
Conclusion: Circularity as an Engineering Discipline
In this context, it is essential that packaging redesign decisions be made through a multidisciplinary approach. Industry experience consistently shows that the best results emerge when development, quality, production, procurement, and marketing teams work simultaneously, aligning technical, commercial, and environmental objectives from the earliest stages of a project.
It is equally important to validate proposed changes through technical testing and real-world performance evaluations. Barrier testing, sealability assessments, mechanical resistance analysis, pallet stability studies, and distribution performance trials anticipate deviations and refine designs before industrial implementation. This preventive approach reduces operational risks and avoids unnecessary costs.
Advancing toward more circular packaging solutions in the pet food industry is neither a trend nor a marketing exercise. Above all, it is a technical challenge that requires expertise, sound judgment, and a systemic understanding of packaging. When redesign is approached through engineering—analyzing functions, interactions, and consequences—it becomes possible to develop solutions that effectively protect products, meet logistical requirements, and align with the principles of the circular economy.
The good news is that the necessary technological tools already exist. The real differentiator lies in how they are applied.
By Pablo Petinatto, Petropack
Source: All Pet Food Magazine
Interviews
4+ MIN
05/11/2025
The Interview: Matías Guri, General Manager of Petropack
From your leadership perspective, what are the main challenges in running the company strategically?
The main challenge is to maintain competitiveness in an increasingly demanding global market, support the shift toward more sustainable packaging, and ensure efficiency through the entire value chain. At the strategic level, we aim to balance innovation with operational strength to quickly address market demands without compromising quality consistency. As regards the operational part, our daily effort focuses on maintaining a high-quality service meeting each partner's standards. Developing and attracting talent is essential, as is keeping teams motivated—behind every response, delivery, and technological advance, there are people who make it possible.
Petropack is positioned in the flexible packaging industry. What solutions are you developing for the pet food segment, and what differentiates you in the market?
We mainly work with high-barrier packaging in the pet food market to ensure product preservation, freshness, and food safety. Through our technologies of coextrusion up to 7 layers and different films, we have developed layering structures and recyclable monomaterials with high magnetic resistance, strong sealing properties, and accurate pallets due to their high friction coefficient and air evacuation system.
Personalization is our key differentiator—whether in formats, structures, printed design, or technical support—from packaging development to installation on the bagging line. We are not only a packaging supplier but also a strategic partner.
When it comes to technological innovation, where are you placing your bets? Is there a technology, system, or project that stands out for its impact on quality or efficiency?
At Petropack, we strive to be at the forefront of each stage of the conversion process. From the extrusion process to the polyethylene film, we create high-performance formulas, offering mechanical resistance, fat migration stability, and barrier properties against moisture, oxygen, and light, and we leverage the potential of 7-layering coextrusion. One of our major investments is Printastic, a flexographic printer with expanded foam and digital modulation, with which we achieve ultra-high-definition levels that set us apart in the market. In the cutting step, we incorporated laser cutting to develop personalized easy open patterns, inside micro-perforations at 140 microns for ventilation, alphanumeric single codes for each packaging (ideal for sales), special labels, and NFC technology. Finally, in manufacturing, we implemented super premium-oriented innovations, such as degassing valves, side handles, Innolok and 360-like sealings, foldover bottoms, and rounded corners, among others. In addition to improving functionality, these features add unique value to the consumer experience.
In a dynamic industry like pet food, how do you address market needs and adapt to changing consumer demands?
We address the needs by actively listening to our clients and following global trends. The pet food category is sensitive to shifts in consumption habits: even more consumers are looking for practical, recyclable, and different packaging. To succeed, it is crucial to stay close to clients and support their business growth through innovation. Always seeking to be at the forefront, we also have a close relationship with suppliers, associations, and organisms that set the agenda in innovation and sustainability, which help us to apply these insights in concrete solutions for the regional market.
In addition to the product itself, what do customers value in a packaging supplier? How do you address customer experience and long-term relationships?
Customers evaluate satisfaction in a more integral way: they consider not only the product but also technical support, offers versatility, and short lead times. As a result, Petropack focuses on service; our expert teams follow up after sales, training, and direct assistance in plants when required. We want to establish long-term relationships based on transparency and joint innovation. Our commitment extends beyond packaging; Petropacks knows that each packaging represents the client's projections to the market.
From a strategic perspective, what role does Latin America play in Petropack's expansion and positioning? Are you planning to reach additional countries?
Latin America is the starting point for our expansion. We are already present in several markets, and our goal is to consolidate and focus on countries with growth potential in the pet food industry. Our value proposal has strengths in neighboring markets, where we aim not only to sell packaging but also to share knowledge and tailored solutions. International expansion is a key axis in our short-term strategic plan.
'The pet food industry in Latin America is experiencing dynamism and professionalism. Packaging is essential in the value chain—besides protecting the product, it communicates the brand and connects with consumers' emotions. At Petropack, we are committed to investing in technology and human talent to address this growth by providing solutions that combine innovation, sustainability, and profitability.'
Thank you, Matias, for sharing your experience and insights about the industry!
By Matías Guri, General Manager of Petropack
Source: All Pet Food Magazine
