It’s only natural: Melbourne startup’s compostable wrap has got Spiral Foods covered

A B Corp certified material science company on a mission to end human reliance on traditional plastics has inked a partnership with Spiral Foods that will see the Australian food supplier and distributor adopt Great Wrap’s compostable cling wrap across its supply chain.

Melbourne-based startup Great Wrap was founded in 2019 by husband-wife team Jordy and Julia Kay, who developed compostable cling wrap for homes and compostable pallet wrap for businesses after realising the effects that plastic waste was having on the land.

Great Wrap manufactures the only Australian-made compostable stretch wrap and recently launched the world’s first compostable pallet wrap made with food waste and compostable biopolymers.

The startup raised $24 million in mid-2022 and now employs a team of 25 full-time employees working out of its Melbourne-based factory and main offices. 

Co-founder and co-CEO Julia Kay says Great Wrap is excited to introduce the startup’s compostable pallet wrap into the Spiral Foods supply chain.

“This is something we have been working on for four years now and this is kind of the beginning of really big things to come,” she says.

“We are seeing a huge interest from the food space and I just think that now that our product is available at commercial scale, and there are a lot of other products on the market available too, I think we will start to see that shift happen really quickly.

“That means there’s a lot less plastic in landfill, which is obviously the main goal for us.”

“Huge addressable market”

Kay says when she and her husband started Great Wrap in 2019 they didn’t have backgrounds in packing.

“I was in architecture and Jordy was a winemaker, so we were consuming a lot of pallet wraps and both seeing a lot of pallets kind of coming and going,” she explains.

“We both just realised that this was just such a huge addressable market in the plastic space and if you could sort of change that product, you could have a profound impact on plastic waste. So that was kind of how it began. 

“Since then we’ve partnered with Monash University, pilot facilities and now at our commercial facility, just sort of working on the development of the product, getting it to a point that you can really see it for commercial use.

“Partnering with Spiral Foods is really the first step along the way of reducing the carbon footprint of supply chains.”

Great Wrap is also excited to be coming to market with the machine wrap, says Kay, which will be the next step for the partnership between the startup and Spiral Foods.

“Machine wrap just goes on an automatic wrapper, so that means businesses like Spiral Foods will be wrapping a portion of their pellets by hand and sell them with the automatic wrapper, and that just means that they can continue to deliver great products,” she says.

“We are excited by the food service space, so there are some products coming down the line there.

“We are doubling our capacity next year here at the factory and we’re also in conversations with some major retailers in North America. So we are really trying to build our global footprint as well.”

Julia and Jordy Kay, co-founders of Great Wrap. Source: Supplied

A “no-brainer” for Spiral Foods

Spiral Foods was established in Melbourne in the 1970s and distributes and manufactures contract packs as well as imports products and ingredients overseas to Japan, the US, South East Asia and New Zealand.

Marketing director Raphaelle Wilson says with Spiral Foods sending out pallets of products both nationally and internationally, a strong and reliable pallet wrap was non-negotiable.

“We send a lot, definitely in the tens of thousands each year,” she says.

“For us, we’ve got a duty and a corporate responsibility to really look at our waste.

“We have a lot of natural products and certified organic products, so environmental sustainability is really big for us.

“Obviously it’s been quite limited when we look at pallet wraps and what solutions there are out there. Unfortunately, a lot was going to the landfill. 

“So partnering with Great Wrap and seeing what they’re working on, I think was a no-brainer for us.”