German specialty paper manufacturer Felix Schoeller has partnered with Hamburg-based AI packaging company one.five in a strategic push to expand its presence in sustainable paper-based packaging.
Felix Schoeller, a specialty paper company, has teamed up with one.five to integrate AI-powered material intelligence into their product development and leapfrog its competitors to establish itself as a dominant player in high-barrier paper packaging solutions. The partnership with one.five is designed to compress development timelines, mitigate R&D risk, and enable the 130-year-old manufacturer to capture demand from brand owners actively seeking alternatives to petrochemical laminates.
The collaboration comes as polymer prices surge more than 40% due to Middle East conflict, with major producers including Shell, Qatar Energy, and Kuwait Petroleum declaring force majeure. For Felix Schoeller, the crisis represents both urgency and opportunity: the chance to position itself as the go-to supplier for brands seeking stable, sustainable, and high performance packaging solutions.
Intelligence Before Investment
Felix Schoeller will use the one.five performance prediction system, trained on a sizable dataset of packaging solutions and production, as well as filling machine data, to identify which paper-based designs will succeed commercially before committing R&D resources. The system can achieve 90.5% prediction accuracy using models that look at over 110 material parameters. A significant upgrade when compared to the accuracy of conventional methods, around 53.8%, which use single benchmark parameters to identify suitable material candidates.
one.five will build a custom performance prediction system for Felix Schoeller, which takes into account the unique aspects of its proprietary curtain-coating manufacturing process. This will ensure that the system’s packaging intelligence is grounded in real production constraints, not generalistic theoretical models.
Andreas Bergmeier, Head of Innovation & Technical Sales Packaging, Felix Schoeller: “We see an opportunity to quickly establish ourselves as the leading strategic packaging partner for major consumer goods brands seeking to derisk their supply chains and meet sustainability commitments, without compromising on product protection nor price. This partnership with one.five gives us the intelligence infrastructure to develop and sell faster than the current market leaders. We’re built for the long term, and this is how we accelerate into pole position with a technologically advanced partner that can provide both pace and precision.”
A Pattern Emerging Across Heavy Industry
For the packaging market as a whole, the stakes are high. Switching costs for new solutions have never been lower and with the rise of AI tools in other related areas such as procurement, Brand owners are actively seeking alternatives to petrochemical laminates. Packaging and material manufacturers who can develop feasible solutions faster, validated against real demand, are well positioned to capture a significant share of a market that is ready to move.
Martin Weber, Co-founder & Managing Director, one.five: “This partnership redefines the pace of material innovation. We are not delivering software. We are delivering a dedicated expert team and a packaging intelligence system designed to ensure Felix Schoeller’s success in a market that is moving faster than traditional development cycles can keep up with.”
one.five is embedding its AI-powered intelligence directly into packaging go-to-market workflows; not as a standalone software product, but as an integrated service combining predictive modeling, packaging material expertise, and continuous calibration against real manufacturing and market conditions. The approach represents a new generation of services companies, which effectively leverage AI’s capabilities to offer highly bespoke services to customers at scale.
The Felix Schoeller partnership is a signal that AI-driven material intelligence is moving from pilot projects to mission-critical infrastructure. As petrochemical supply chains remain volatile and sustainability pressure intensifies, the ability to predict packaging performance with 90%+ accuracy before committing resources is no longer a competitive advantage, it’s becoming table stakes.
