Objective
The food sector (including beverage industry) accounts for approximately two thirds of global packaging and about 50% of these packages are made of plastics. Plastic food packaging materials currently in use are generally non-biodegradable causing ecological imbalance and aesthetic deterioration of nature. At the same time being a petro-chemical based product, plastics rely on a depleting and increasingly costly natural resource with relatively low LCA performance (high CO2 footprint).
Food packaging – which is predominantly produced by SMEs - is crucial as physical and barrier protection keeping foodstuffs clean, fresh, and safe for consumers while increasing shelf life. Bio-based plastics offer a highly promising alternative and new biological materials are emerging as potential feedstock, such as chitin waste material from the fishing industry, mostly used in cosmetics applications due to their inherent bacteriostatic properties. Chitin waste exceeds 250 billion tons/year, and is considered hazardous due to its high perishability and polluting effect, both on land and sea. So re-use and up cycling to higher value applications would establish an important step forwards towards resource efficiency, providing a relevant innovation for the SME packaging industry that is under pressure to reduce cost and respond to environmental concerns. Recent research results at the University of Prague, leveraging on an SME owned world-wide patent (MAVI) for the production of chitin Nano fibrils, show interesting additional application opportunities of chitin as a bio-based polymer. The n-CHITOPACK project will leverage on the inherent superior properties of these chitin nano-fibrils for the development of new food packaging materials that are bacteriostatic, 100% bio-degradable and can be used by European packaging SMEs, contributing to increase their competitiveness in the market and to solving environmental challenges.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries fisheries
- natural sciences chemical sciences polymer sciences
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies food technology food packaging
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-SME-2012
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
04011 Aprilia Latina
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.