Coffee PaperBoard lid is ready to take over Plastic lid – The Paper Lid Company
A long-term collaboration among Finnish startup The Paper Lid Company and Metsä Board is set to revolutionize the future of takeaway beverage cups with the launch of a 100% recyclable paperboard lid. “This discovery is hands down the greatest example of packaging design I have ever been correlated with,” declares Ilkka Harju, Packaging Services Director at Metsä Board.
Consumptions of Lid
Each year in Finland alone, we get within somewhere in the region of 350–400 million takeaway coffee cups and 150 million lids. Also, most of us do not think twice about the environmental consequences as we seize various plastic caps and struggle to press them in place.
Entrepreneur Matti Salonoja, however, is not most of us. The originator of The Paper Lid Company has been wrestling with the difficulty of creating a 100% recyclable, fiber-based alternative to plastic lids for takeaway beverage cups for several years, and he has a like-minded ally in Ilkka.
“Ilkka and I have been applying this difficulty over and over in our minds ever since we first met, and now gratitude to Metsä Board’s invaluable assistance, we have built a functional solution that ticks all the appropriate boxes,” Matti speaks.
Click Sound 😃
The Paper Lid Company utilizes lightweight dispersion barrier-coated paperboard to create a lid that fits snugly onto the cup with a satisfying click. Besides a great user experience, the cap also allows outstanding functional representation.

“That lid can cope with the humidity and warmth from hot drinks without converting soggy and is also excellent for cold drinks, too,” Matti describes. “As well as being fully recyclable also biodegradable, it has incredible potential as a branding tool because the paperboard can easily be designed with logos and lettering. There are things you can do besides this lid that would be slowly expensive to do with a plastic lid.”
The company’s production line is previously up and running, turning the first batch of Metsä Board paperboard at their 850-square-meter manufacturing facility in Masku, near the city of Turku in Southwest Finland.
Each collaboration with perfection at its core
The packaging design organization at Metsä Board’s Excellence focuses on Äänekoski, middle Finland, has added unique elements to the mix, co-creating the primary and transport packaging for the lids. “We have worked commonly with Matti to develop the whole packaging product family based on our folding boxboard and white kraft liners,” Ilkka says. “We also worked together on the branding components for the theory so that The Paper Lid Company can put its most beneficial foot forward when launching the solution.”
Takeaway Solution
Ilkka is in no doubt that this unique solution to a decades-old problem is going to revolutionize the takeaway cup market: “If I had a euro for all time someone has asked me what great packaging design is, I had been a millionaire,” he laughs. “This is the greatest example I have ever seen. It is so simple you wonder why no one has thought of it before when you see it in action. Through real design thinking and Matti’s willingness to spend time, effort, and financial resources, we have produced a useful and sustainable product that has circular-economy considering at its core,” says Ilkka.
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