A three-way packaging collaboration has cracked one of food retail's most stubborn technical problems: Cirkla, Belmark, and Ossid have jointly launched the first resealable fiber tray system that works across fresh protein, produce, and ready meals — without requiring brands to retool their sealing lines.
The system pairs Cirkla's molded fiber trays with Belmark's peel/reseal lidding film and Ossid's ReeMaster NextGen Automatic Tray Sealer. Until now, resealable packaging at commercial scale has been the exclusive province of rigid plastic, because bonding a resealable film to a fiber substrate without compromising the tray's internal liner had never been solved at production volume. The trio debuted the solution at The Global Produce and Floral Show in Orlando (October 14–16) and is also showing it at Pack Expo in Chicago (October 18–21).
Why It Matters
For c-store operators and their fresh-food suppliers, the development lands at a moment when convenience-channel foodservice programs are expanding rapidly into grab-and-go protein, fresh produce cups, and chilled ready meals. Packaging that signals sustainability while maintaining the peel/reseal consumer experience operators demand from refrigerated cases is increasingly a retailer requirement, not a nice-to-have. Cirkla claims its fiber trays reduce plastic waste by up to 90% versus conventional rigid plastic trays, and the company says cost parity — not a price premium — is what makes the switch viable for volume buyers.
Glenn Divers, Vice President of Sales at Cirkla, called the launch an inflection point: "When you convert a single-use tray into a resealable, multi-use package without compromising performance, cost, or asking brands to change their lines — you remove every reason not to switch." That plug-and-play positioning is central to Cirkla's commercial pitch; the trays have been validated on all major tray sealers in the U.S. market, including Ossid's equipment, with no capital investment or line changes required from processors or retailers.
The Technology Stack
Belmark, a nearly 50-year-old privately held lidding film specialist, supplies the resealable film layer. Jason Vandeloo, Director of Business Development at Belmark, emphasized the cross-disciplinary challenge: "Bringing resealable functionality to a fiber tray required expertise across materials, film, and equipment — and each partner played an important role."
Ossid, a ProMach brand and North American distributor of Reepack, contributes the ReeMaster NextGen sealer — a stainless steel, washdown-ready machine with servo-driven indexing, a 12-inch color touchscreen, and recipe management that supports top-seal, Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), and Vacuum Skin Packaging (VSP) formats. That flexibility matters for c-store distribution partners supplying multiple SKU formats across a single production run.
Supply Chain Outlook
Cirkla's first U.S. manufacturing facility is scheduled to begin operations in Gainesville, Georgia in Q1 2027, adding domestic supply chain optionality for retailers sourcing fresh-food packaging. The company already operates manufacturing in India and says it has proven the tray in production environments with major U.S. retailers and protein processors — a validation record that reduces adoption risk for operators looking to refresh their fresh-food and foodservice packaging without taking on capital exposure.
For convenience retailers building out chilled grab-and-go and fresh prepared food programs, a fiber tray that can replace plastic across protein, produce, and ready-meal sets — while meeting resealability standards — addresses both sustainability commitments and front-of-case presentation goals in one specification change.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
