a european consortium led by flexible packaging company hatzopoulos thessaloniki greece www.hatzopoulos.gr is developing biodegradable, multilayered packaging for dried food applications. the twoyear project, which is supported by eur 1.2m of funding from the eu&39s seventh framework programme, is expected to be completed by september 2015. the consortium is developing the new biobased packaging, named &ldquobioactivelayer&rdquo, as an alternative to current solutions available for modified atmosphere packaging map. the new cost effective packaging material is expected to provide a shelflife of up to 24 months.&ldquoa 5 substitution of the materials used in existing map applications would reduce the 300,000 t of nonrenewable plastic packaging that is currently being disposed of across europe,&rdquo said lefteris tourasanidis, project coordinator at hatzopoulos. &ldquoour aim is to successfully introduce a completely renewable and biodegradable packaging solution that will maintain freshness and cut such high levels of packaging waste.&rdquothe project involves enhancing novel paperbased, biodegradable, multilayer structures by increasing the paper moisture barrier &ndash by applying blends of waxes and resins. the main moisture barrier improvement will rely on a composite based on pha. as pha currently lacks the barrier required for map applications, the consortium plans to develop composites with mineral fillers and oxygen barrier materials to obtain a moisture barrier layer.other partners in the project include pigments and additives specialist nuevas tecnicas de coloracion barcelona spain www.ntc.cc, packaging films company skymark packaging international scunthorpe uk www.skymark.co.uk, baby food cereals producer belourthe hamoir belgium www.belourthe.com, supermarket chain plusfresc, lleida spain www.plusfresc.cat, wageningen university www.wageningenur.nl in the netherlands and the uk materials technology research institute melton mowbray uk www.ukmatri.org.
