September 2025
From yogurt to snacks and diapers, Made From Stone packaging uses up to 80 percent less plastic. It is recyclable, floats, degrades, and complies with regulations without requiring major investments. This is Okeanos’ bet to challenge plastic.
Imagining the perfect package inevitably leads us to nature, which has refined models of protection, efficiency, and functionality over millions of years. The egg is one of them. Its structure protects the contents, regulates the internal microenvironment, degrades easily, and can even be recycled. This combination of efficiency, safety, and sustainability inspires an innovation that has earned its place in the packaging industry: Made From Stone, a compound capable of reducing plastic use in packaging by up to 80 percent.
This material preserves product integrity and adapts to industrial forming, injection, blow molding, and extrusion processes, across applications ranging from food and beverages to home care products. Most importantly, it is a scalable technology that requires no investment or modifications to existing machinery.
Okeanos formula: from eggshell to global market
Made From Stone is formulated from calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a renewable natural resource with unique properties, found both in geological formations such as marble, limestone, and chalk, and in biological organisms like snail shells, coral, pearls, and eggshells. The development comes from Okeanos, a dual purpose company that, beyond innovating in packaging materials, seeks to reduce ocean pollution. Its name literally means ocean.
Okeanos offers patented compounds that replace a large portion of plastic resin with calcium carbonate in packaged consumer products. While they still contain a small fraction of resin, these products significantly reduce CO2 footprint and environmental impact before reaching consumers. The result is packaging with up to 80 percent less plastic, recyclable and degradable, durable and resistant, washable and reusable.
Florencio Cuetara, CEO of Okeanos, explains how this innovation began within his family business: “My family has spent 102 years in the cookies, snacks, and dairy market. I am the third generation at Grupo Cuetara, a brand widely known in Mexico, and everything we packaged was plastic or combinations of plastic, paper, and metallized materials. We were looking for a solution for ourselves, and we found one that we now want to share with manufacturers and converters around the world.”
Today, Okeanos produces this material in 14 plants across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and works with some of the world’s leading dairy, food, and mass consumer goods manufacturers. In Latin America alone, it operates plants in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and soon the Dominican Republic.
The science behind packaging that floats, recycles, and degrades
From OKIV, its innovation center in Cincinnati, United States, Okeanos drives three research lines to refine and expand the uses of Made From Stone. Cuetara outlines the innovation priorities: “The first area is density reduction. For example, we aim for a stone-based tray with a very high carbonate content to weigh less than a polypropylene tray. The second is exploring what other materials we can combine with stone to create recyclable, compostable, or even water-soluble structures. And the third is serious work on degradation and end of life.”
Thanks to this patented technology, Made From Stone products have a density below 1 and can float. This is an essential characteristic because it facilitates sorting and integration into material recovery streams.
Although each production process is different and specifications vary depending on strength, flexibility, colors, shapes, and finishes, the Okeanos innovation team shares a common goal: to replicate in packaging the carbonate concentration of an eggshell, which is composed of 97 percent of this mineral.
Additionally, Okeanos studies have shown that Made From Stone products can degrade and later biodegrade in approximately 2.5 years when a degrading agent is used.
A new narrative for sustainable packaging
Alongside its innovation, Okeanos provides data related to the sustainability of its technology. According to the company, calcium carbonate reduces not only plastic footprint but also CO2 footprint. Cuetara summarizes it clearly: “We have studies comparing carbonate against paper, aluminum, bioplastics, and other solutions. Made From Stone wins in 10 out of 11 factors, including acidification, freshwater use, saltwater use, and natural resource consumption.”
The material does have some technical limitations. It cannot be transparent and requires a specific coating to handle highly acidic substances. While these constraints do not diminish its value, they do require technical support to identify the most suitable uses for each application.
From a regulatory perspective, Made From Stone adds value. “If legislation requires industrial composting, we have a product that composts industrially. If recycling is required as the end solution, we make it recyclable. And if biodegradability is needed, we also offer that option. We can adapt to European regulations, as well as those in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, or India. The solution adapts to what each regulation dictates,” explains the Okeanos CEO.
In addition, the company developed a communication system using QR codes that allows verification of the packaging’s environmental impact. This dynamic life cycle system calculates footprint reduction based on the user’s location. The same logic of contextualizing impact is reflected in its production model. While the technology is global, compound manufacturing is local, reinforcing the environmental and social value proposition. “In Ecuador it is made with Ecuadorian stone, in Colombia with Colombian stone, in Brazil with Brazilian stone. We are global in technology, but local in solution,” Cuetara emphasizes.
More applications, less energy: the potential of calcium carbonate in packaging
Calcium carbonate based packaging is suitable for food contact and is already used across a wide range of products. “In Latin America we are producing yogurt containers and bottles, caps, packaging for snacks, flours, pasta, rice, wet wipes, and diapers, among others.”
The investment required to adopt the technology, Cuetara explains, is minimal. “All it takes is patience,” while the Okeanos development team supports the packaging manufacturer through a pilot test directly at their plant. “It is a process that can take 10 minutes or an hour to show the manufacturer how we increase compound content and lower process temperature. Our product is not only economically viable, it also requires less processing energy. In bottle blowing, for example, it heats and cools faster, reducing cycle time and increasing output.”
A future vision in a vast sea of packaging
Beyond its technological proposal, Okeanos promotes adoption through a communication strategy aimed at brands and consumers. The company offers marketing support to incorporate the Made From Stone seal on packaging, and a specialized team works with brands on social networks like TikTok and Instagram to highlight environmental benefits for younger consumers who are increasingly aware of the impact of their purchasing decisions.
The potential market is enormous. While the company currently produces 50,000 tons per month, this volume is still modest compared to a global market that consumes more than one million tons of plastics per day.
Looking ahead, Okeanos aims to strengthen partnerships with converters and brands of all sizes while continuing to innovate. “I do not know what the market will look like in 2028, but what I can say is that we will remain just as transparent, clear, realistic, and agile. We will continue offering economically viable, proven solutions inspired by nature, with global technology and local impact, in the search for the perfect package,” Cuetara concludes.
The following is a direct quote from the original article published in Spanish here
