‘Time is right': WinCup moving to all biodegradable EPS

The time is right, says Michael Winters, for WinCup Inc. to completely switch production of the company's expanded polystyrene foodservice products to biodegradable packaging. The Atlanta-based company, with eight manufacturing plants around the country, expects to complete the move to its Vio brand of biodegradable EPS by this fall.

WinCup, which introduced biodegradable Vio EPS products to the market in 2016, has seen continuing momentum and interest grow in the product line over time.

"I can tell you over the last three years or so, the energy and the momentum of eco-friendly and sustainable products has just really rocketed with the younger generation that is now in purchasing power positions," said Winters, president and chief revenue officer for WinCup. "They are looking for manufacturers to do something."

Vio products contain an additive that allows the EPS to break down in landfills that are biologically active. The additive, which WinCup declined to reveal, attracts microbes that biodegrade 92 percent of the Vio foam in four years.

Landfills are typically designed in a couple of different ways: those that use higher moisture content to promote degradation of waste through microbes and those that seek to limit moisture in an effort to keep the waste as stable as possible.

WinCup actually started working on a biodegradable EPS in 2010 before introducing Vio six years later. At first, the market was not quite ready.

"Throughout my career in the CPG [consumer packaged goods] business, I've seen environmental products come up to the edge and retreat and come up to the edge and retreat multiple times, never really taking a meaningful hold from a consumption standpoint," he explained.

The first couple years of Vio, Winters said, were "relatively slow."

"But around 2018, 2019, it just really started picking up enormous amount of steam. It has taken over a very large majority of our business. We are the second-largest foam [products] producer in the United States. So we have a lot of size and a lot of scale," he said.

Demand for to-go foodservice items during the pandemic also helped spur interest in the Vio brand.

It was just about a year ago that the company decided to completely commit to biodegradable foam. "We knew we had the capability to do it, and we knew we had the science and research to do it. And we knew the customers were asking for it. So it just seemed like a perfect combination to actually take this technology across our entire system," Winters said.

WinCup views the move to produce only biodegradable EPS products as part of a larger push. "We are really working to be a major disrupter in the marketplace," Winters said.

The company also produces phade-brand straws and stirrers made from PHA, or polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biopolymer made from fermented canola oil that also is biodegradable.

WinCup sold its EPS manufacturing business, then called StyroChem, in 2019. StyroChem was later sold to Epsilyte in 2021, and WinCup continues to source its EPS from Epsilyte work under a long-term supply agreement, Winters said.

"Here in the U.S., the reality is that less than 10 percent of plastic actually gets recycled and the vast majority of foodservice items end up in a landfill," WinCup CEO Brad Laporte said in a statement. "Our Vio-branded products tackle this issue head-on."

While the majority of WinCup products are, well, cups, the company also will use the Vio biodegradable technology for other foam products such as bowls and containers.

"Our customers are demanding more eco-friendly and sustainable options, and by making bold decisions like moving our entire portfolio over to Vio, we are delivering on our promise to always remain environmentally focused through innovation," Laporte said in his statement.

WinCup's sustainability focus, the company said, was bolstered when private equity firm Atar Capital purchased the company in 2020.

Pricing of WinCup's products will not be impacted by the decision, Winters said. "We have worked for about 10 years on this to get the cost down to where it is negligible and easily absorbed."

Using biodegradable resin is a move designed to appeal to more consumers at a time when the use of EPS has come under scrutiny in recent years.

"It's really an offensive and a defensive move for us," Winters said. But one that's expected to open "up an immense amount of new channels and new customers for us."

"We are very much a quick and nimble organization. We pride ourselves on not being filled with red tape and bureaucracy. When we get the science and when we get the data on our side, we form a strategy and we run with it," he said. "We know the time is right."