Image: Woodly Oy
Woodly – made of wood, looks like plastic
23.09.2024
Wood-based substitute material for plastic offers the food industry new sustainable options. Finnish start-up and SAVE FOOD member Woodly supplies wood cellulose polymers for various packaging solutions and products such as reusable cups. The carbon-neutral material is particularly useful in ensuring that bread is hygienically packaged while staying fresh for a long time and looking appetising.
Image: iStock
Artificial intelligence for more process quality
23.08.2024
Artificial intelligence (AI) will play an important part in the future in optimising processes within the food industry. It can lengthen the shelf life of food by allowing precise control of temperature and humidity, for example. AI analyses huge amounts of data in real time in order to guarantee optimum recipes and storage conditions and minimise spoiling.
Image: Constanze Tillmann
Kombucha leather – packaging from the tea lab
25.06.2024
The packaging industry is looking for creative solutions to package food both safely and sustainably. A young team of students and researchers in Istanbul is currently working on prototypes of SCOBY, a leather-like biofilm made from fermented kombucha tea.
Image: SIG
Cartons for Good project wins SAVE FOOD competition
13.12.2023
1.3 billion tonnes of food are lost or wasted globally every year. With their project Cartons for Good, the SIG Foundation is using the SIG know-how to reduce theses losses. With a specially developed bottling station, the team supports communities in poorer countries to preserve food locally – and was able to win in the project competition by the SAVE FOOD Initiative.
Image: BASF
Compostable coating for food-safe paper packaging
13.06.2023
Barrier properties are particularly important to food packaging. Consumers are additionally demanding solutions that are environmentally friendly. BASF has developed an extrusion coating for paper and cardboard packaging, which may be composted both industrially and domestically.
Image: Jonathan Cooper/unsplash
How useful are PET bottles?
16.05.2023
People need water. And it has to be brought to them somehow. That’s where packaging, e.g. PET bottles, is important – particularly in areas where the groundwater is polluted. A study commissioned by Lidl, the German discount supermarket, revealed that it’s quite possible for plastic bottles to be sustainable in the right conditions.
Image: SonicView
Designing barrier-free packaging
16.05.2023
No packaging, no product protection. But how can the visually impaired be sure about what they’re putting in their shopping baskets? A German designer has come up with a clever solution to this problem.
The students worked on the research project in six teams. (Image: BAU)
SAVE FOOD research project: New food packaging from leftover food
18.04.2023
Food production generates a lot of residual material, which is usually not put to use but disposed of. At the same time, there is an increasing demand for alternatives to plastic packaging. Biodegradable and compostable packaging can be a sustainable solution, especially if it is made of leftovers from food production.
Is automation the end-all and be-all? (Image: Rock'n Roll Monkey/unsplash)
Where does automation help in packaging?
10.03.2023
Trend topic or permanent issue? Everybody is talking about automation. However, switching to fully automated packaging solutions is anything but a guarantee for success. Small and medium sized companies should consider several things before investing in large machinery.
As part of the WaysTUP! project, Aimplas has produced a plastic wrap from coffee grounds. (Image: Aimplas)
Plastic wrap from coffee grounds
14.02.2023
The project WaysTUP! is looking for new use options to maintain organic waste in circulation for longer and to use it as secondary raw materials. The Spanish centre for plastic technology Aimplas is using coffee grounds to make biobased polymers for flexible packaging.
The new film by allvac is suitable for wrapping foods and has a high degree of recyclability. (Image: allvac Folien GmbH)
Recyclable wrap for food packaging
16.01.2023
Film wrapping can achieve an appetising presentation of foods at the PoS. For composite films, their ability to be recycled is especially relevant. allvac has achieved confirmation from the cyclos-HTP institute that their new wrapping film is 100 percent recyclable.
Tactile nubs form on the surface of the cap as soon as the contents of the bottle are no longer fit for consumption.
A closure fighting food waste
24.10.2022
Too much food is still being thrown away around the world, even though it may still have a shelf life. Together with United Caps, a London start-up has now developed a bottle cap that provides information about the edibility of the contents beyond the best-before date.
The Innokeg AF-C Transversal can wash and rack returnable and one-way kegs on just one system. (Image: KHS Group)
500 kegs per hour on one conveyor belt
24.09.2022
In the early days, a keg tap was simply driven into the wooden keg with a hammer, but today modern returnable kegs are connected to tap systems. However, after use, they need to be washed and then refilled, or racked. KHS, a Dortmund-based machine manufacturer, has now developed a system that can wash and rack different types of kegs using a single conveyor belt.
Used beverage cartons on the way to the recycling plant. Photo: FKN
Benelux to recycle beverage cartons
17.08.2022
Beverage cartons are not waste, they consist of valuable raw materials that can be recycled. Stora Enso and Tetra Pak want to build a complete recycling system for the composite cartons in Belgium and are currently assessing the project’s feasibility.
Image: AdobeStock
Less material needed to produce sealing films
21.07.2022
Films are an important part of packaging: They provide an impenetrable barrier between the product and the environment. That said, industrial handling of such sealing films is not always simple. A cooperation between Plasthill and Constantia Flexibles has now led to the development of a PE film which uses less material, thus leading to reduced CO2 emissions, yet has greater seal strength.
Image: SSB Wägetechnik GmbH
Vacuum-sealed closures for bulk goods
22.06.2022
Food or building materials present special challenges for the filling and closing process. To make sure that the surroundings stay clean and product safety is guaranteed along the entire supply chain for bulk powders, vacuum seals are used for filling and closing.
Image: CFPR
Digitisation you can print
19.05.2022
For many packagers, labelling products correctly is part of their daily business. But digitisation has now entered this field as well. As a result, some manufacturers are working on combining tried and tested labels with bits and bytes.