Innovators at Work: Meet Audrey Martignat

Innovation is all about transforming technical challenges into sustainable solutions – for our customers and all the people who use their products every day. This is an important motivator for our Innovator at Work: Audrey Martignat. 

As a Product Development Engineer for the Beverage & Casing Business Unit, Audrey’s work directly contributes to creating high-performance, bio-based materials for everyday beverage and casing products. 

Bio-based products with the same high performance 

A major focus of Audrey’s work is developing bio-based beverage materials that maintain the performance customers expect. Removing oil-based plastic fibers may sound simple, but it introduces significant technical challenges: given the low basis weights of many beverage and casing products, it can be difficult to maintain strength, heat-sealability, and durability without oil-based plastic. 

Despite these difficulties, Audrey and the team are making remarkable progress. The biobased papers that they have developed can be found in items that many of us use every day, such as coffee pods and tea bags. 

These materials are engineered to deliver the same functionality as traditional equivalents, while also meeting the growing demand for home-compostable, heat-sealable filter solutions that are free of oil-based plastic. In this way, they help our customers to offer more sustainable products without sacrificing product performance. Innovation has been key to achieving this. 

Strengthened by multiple perspectives 

Of course, this hasn’t been achieved alone. Audrey’s typical day involves lots of collaboration: with Ahlstrom’s technical teams, to review product prototypes, plans, and lab results; with our plant teams, to successfully transfer new paper concepts from the lab to our paper machines; and with our sales teams, to understand what our customers need, as well as emerging market trends and regulatory requirements. 
 
This collaboration as One Team naturally strengthens the innovation process, as does Ahlstrom’s international environment. The need to comply with various regulations for customers in Europe, North America, India, and beyond challenges us to maintain a Growth Mindset – to keep improving and creating new solutions. 

Helping customers and consumers put sustainability into practice 

For Audrey, sustainability is driven by innovation – and, as she points out, something we all care about. Her work is helping both customers and consumers to live by this care in their everyday lives. 

▶️ Watch video interview with Audrey below!