Objective
Dried food has many advantages when compared to other foods: cheaper transportation costs, longer storage life and ease of use. Demand of these foods is forecast to growth, reaching 148Mton globally during 2016. Dried baby food market reflects this trend, as parents have decided to satisfy nutrient requirements of a child using commercial food. This growth is translated to a huge production of packaging and associated wastes.
Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is a preserving technique usually applied in dried food. Applications are commonly based on multilayer plastic materials. However, there is no cost-effective and proven technology capable of fully recycling these materials. A 5% substitution of these materials using Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) applications would reduce over 300.000 tons of non renewable plastic packaging wastes disposal .The use of bio-based materials is a promising alternative in the packaging industry to reduce the disposal and the use of non-renewable resources.
BIOACTIVELAYER consortium will develop a multilayer biodegradable structure that can provide a sustainable and more environmentally friendly alternative to materials currently used in MAP.
BIOACTIVELAYER solution will provide a novel biodegradable multilayer structure based in paper for dried baby food packaging. Paper properties will be enhanced following a three steps approach. 1) To increase paper moisture barrier, blends of waxes and resins will be applied. 2) Main moisture barrier improvement will rely on a composite based in PHA. PHA lacks of the barrier required for MAP applications. Therefore, composites with mineral fillers will be developed to obtain a moisture barrier layer. 3) Oxygen barrier materials will be improved through use of oxygen scavenging compounds.
A whole sustainable and tailor made solution that will maintain the product quality and assure food safety, will be developed by BIOACTIVELAYER consortium, reaching a shelf life of 24 months.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste management
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcomposites
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesfood technologyfood safety
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesfood technologyfood packaging
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterialsbioplasticspolyhydroxyalkanoates
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-SME-2013
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
BSG-SME - Research for SMEsCoordinator
54628 THESSALONIKI
Greece