The compostable cling film Nature Fresh for automatic packaging has been optimized and tested on the newly developed wrapping machines, 2 Food processor machines for the industrial sector (AUTOMAC DUAL and AUTOMAC INDUSTRIAL), and 1 retail machine. The food processor machines have been developed, tested and optimized and are now in commercialization phase. The first 3 prototypes of the retail machine have been manufactured, tested and optimized and now the Retail NF machine (which will be marketed as ARYA) is in the 0 series design phase. In this second period, end user field trials have been conducted on the 3 different wrapping machines to verify their optimization.
To date, the productions of Nature Fresh film and Food processor wrappers are among the scheduled standard activity of Gruppo Fabbri while the Retail wrapper is in finalization.
Regarding the development of the scale, transportation and application unit of the Retail NF machine, main work has been to identify and test compostable labels on their performance, compared to conventional labels. Within this phase the adhesion force, pull out strength and the printing quality of compostable labels have been tested and documented and a final specification of compostable labels has been created.
All the transportation units have been designed to bring products from the automatic weighing system with scale to the automatic wrapping machine using Nature Fresh compostable film to pack products. The scale and scale interface have been designed Including all electronics interfaces and approval processes for electronics and MID (EU weighing & measuring approval). The application units have been designed to place up to 2 top and 1bottom label(s) on product packages, including all electronic interfaces and software programming.
An important effort has been done to prepare specification of prototypes and components as well as mounting guidelines, so any team can properly work with the machines.
The consortium has also worked on marketing concept to promote the EU project and its result named compostable film Nature Fresh and wrapping machines including retail with labelling and weighing system, using available media (web pages, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, ESPERA blog, packaging specialized journals, attendance to exhibitions and fairs…). Market analysis, trend scanning, pricing analysis and governmental regulation have been deeply checked with regards to compostable packaging material. We aim to continue implementing effective marketing & communication actions, exploiting our IP and commercial strategy as well, to let Nature Fresh be widely known and adopted as one of the crucial solutions to the issue of plastic waste.
It has also been important the assessment of the European regulatory landscape related to compostability and food packaging, identification and execution of the laboratory tests for the Nature Fresh packaging solution, as well as the analysis of the criteria to assess the sustainability of food packaging and assessment of the environmental impact of the final solution
