Italian intellectual property firm Bio-on has developed bioplastic material aimed at creating new sustainable and biodegradable food packaging materials in the future.
Developed with a budget of €4m, the bioplastic will be featuring in a new European project, dubbed BioBarr, which expands to new bio-based food packaging materials with enhanced barrier properties.
BioBarr has secured funding of €3.8m from the Bio Based Industries joint undertaking under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union. The project which will have duration of four years is scheduled to begin on 1 June.
It will be coordinated by Tecnoalimenti and will have the involvement of seven European partners, public and private, from Italy, Finland, Denmark and Spain.
The objective of the research project is to create new bio-based and biodegradable food packaging materials, to enhance and strengthen their barrier functionalities. Another project goal is to assess their application in real working environments within the food industry.
Tecnoalimenti CEO Raffaello Prugger said: "Food products generate a lot of waste plastic packaging. The idea behind this project is to meet the demands expressed by the food industry to offer the market food products with a long shelf-life combined with environmentally-friendly packaging solutions.”
BioBarr will focus on PHAs biopolymers (polyhydroxyalkanoates) produced using Bio-on technology.
Bio-on chairman and CEO Marco Astorri said: "We are extremely proud to take part in the BioBarr project, to be an active part in this varied team of complementary researchers and companies.
"It will allow us to study and increase the potential of our bioplastic in the food packaging sector for new solutions in the wider consumer sectors."
Bio-on which is the main scientific partner of the project will utilize a grant of €800,000 for the production, development and demonstration of PHAs film to be adapted to the objectives of BioBarr.
