BioBarr

• Sustainable PHA film development: develop PHA-based films for food packaging applications using natural production processes and raw materials derived from waste and agro-industrial co-products.

• Biodegradable coating treatments: investigate PHA coating methods that preserve the biodegradability of the materials.

• Improved barrier properties: explore the combination of PHA and PLA (polylactic acid) to enhance oxygen and humidity barrier performance.

• Biodegradable ink compatibility: assess the compatibility of innovative biodegradable inks with the newly developed PHA films.

• Food safety and industrial feasibility: evaluate food safety, legislative compliance and the economic feasibility of the materials for industrial food packaging applications.

• Food packaging validation: test the most promising materials in bakery product packaging in collaboration with the food industry.

• Environmental and economic assessment: assess the environmental and economic performance of the developed bio-based materials.

Results

• Biodegradable packaging: advanced fully biodegradable, bio-based food packaging using PHAs produced from sugar beet industry wastes via bacterial fermentation.

• Flexible packaging reels: created PHA-based flexible packaging reels compliant with food safety standards, although brittleness and some performance limitations remained

• Barrier properties: developed new processing methods to improve barrier properties and gained significant know-how to improve material performance.

• Compostable bio-inks: produced compostable bio-inks from natural resins and pigments with excellent printability, enabling fully biodegradable packaging systems.

• Fossil-plastic alternative: demonstrated that PHAs are promising alternatives to fossil-based plastics, supporting the circular bioeconomy, although further investigation was needed.

Impacts

• Bio-based alternative: sought to create a viable bio-based alternative to fossil-based polymers for food packaging.

• Cost reduction: tried to reduce overall costs, on a life cycle analysis basis, compared with on-market materials.

• Improved properties: aimed to improve the mechanical and/or functional properties of the new packaging materials in a specific field, compared with the state of the art.

• Longer shelf life:  increase the shelf life of the targeted food products by at least 10%.