Since June 19, Topac has officially been part of the illustrious circle of innovative companies that are allowed to carry the TOP 100 seal. In the scientific selection process, the company impressed in size class B (51 to 200 employees) especially in the category 'Innovative Processes and Organisation'. "We are very pleased about this award and take it as an incentive to continue the path we have taken and to continue to turn creative ideas into innovative products in the future," says Topac Managing Director Sven Deutschmann.
As a specialist for print products and carton packaging, Topac now focuses on the development of sustainable packaging solutions for the food industry. While the core business used to consist almost exclusively of packaging for records and other sound carriers, the TOP 100 company has been focusing on diversification for several years now. First, the Gütersloh-based company launched sustainable packaging for cosmetics and SIM cards. "We have now transferred this innovative competence to the food industry," explains Deutschmann and continues: "Everyone wants to avoid plastic. But in the supermarket, meat in particular is often packed in black plastic trays. Given the high proportion of colour pigments, these cannot be recycled at all, they can only be incinerated.
Together with the Italian specialty machinery manufacturer Mondini, the top innovator developed an alternative in 2019: cardboard packaging covered with a particularly thin, recyclable plastic film. This coating is easy to peel off and can be put into the yellow bags (special recycling bins); the cardboard is put into the waste paper. "This can reduce the use of plastics by up to 70 percent," explains Co-Managing Director Jörg Dickenhorst.
However, the packaging experts from Gütersloh are still on the move with innovative special products for sound carriers in their core segment. A current example from this area is Leonard Cohen's latest studio album "Thanks for the Dance". The album is made of high-quality black through-dyed cardboard, which has been refined with a special gold foil in a complex process and under the most careful processing to give the end product an individual and valuable identity through the packaging.
TOP 100: the competition
Since 1993, compamedia has been awarding the TOP 100 seal of approval for special innovative strength and above-average innovation success to medium-sized companies. Since 2002, the scientific direction has been in the hands of Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke. Franke is founder and chairman of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. Mentor of TOP 100 is the science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar. Project partners are the Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research and the BVMW. As media partners, manager magazin, impulse and W&V accompany the company comparison. More information is available at www.top100.de.
