Project description
Straw for sustainable packaging
Polystyrene plastic used in packaging is problematic. It is bad for the environment and harmful for human health. However, there is an alternative. The EU-funded StrawToGold project is proposing the first commercially viable and ecological process: using straw fibres to create a plastic material with outstanding performance regarding shock absorbance, insulation and humidity regulation. The biodegradable product is cheaper than polystyrene, needs 60 % less space allowing economical transport, disposal and storage, consumes 95 % less energy in production and has high aesthetic appeal. This new packaging material will target the fresh goods sector or items sensitive to shock or temperature, such as consumer electronics and pharmaceuticals.
Objective
STRAWTOGOLD uses straw for the first commercially viable, ecological alternative to polystyrene which has considerable environmental drawbacks and negative impacts on human health. Lack of sustainable packaging solutions is particularly a challenge for companies producing fresh goods or those sensitive to shock or temperature such as consumer electronics and pharmaceuticals. Landpack has used its broad engineering expertise and its farming background to patent a process for treating straw fibers to create a plastic material with outstanding performance in terms of shock absorbance, insulation and humidity regulation. A four step heating, de-moisturizing, pressing and packaging process creates an end product which has the potential reduce the billions of tons of plastic in our environment. Our fully biodegradable products are sold just below Styrofoam’s average price at €3.2/piece with the same excellent insulation and cooling properties and shock absorption capacity. It is 9% cheaper than its alternative, occupies 60% less space for cheaper transport, disposal and storage costs and uses 95% less energy in production. Furthermore, the final product has been praised by our customers for its aesthetic appeal to enhance their branding.
While STRAWTOGOLD has already proven its potential to disrupt the status quo of packaging in the e-food sector with 500 established customers, as a next step we are looking to industrialize and fully automate our current production and create a model for scaling our plants to advance the sustainability of the pharma and industrial sectors. We are currently turning 900 tons of straw into 250,000 boxes/year on our almost fully automated production line which we will optimize and upscale to produce 2 million boxes/year to replace 0.02% of the current Styrofoam packaging in Europe. Given the low cost of our primary materials, we have significant profit margins (80%) and expect to generate a total of €19 million in revenue by 2021.
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.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringfibers
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugs
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
82178 PUCHHEIM
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.