18 May Andaltec takes part of an European project to develop activated graphene for food packaging
The Technological Centre for Plastics (Andaltec) will be engaged in the European Project GraFood, aimed at developing innovate food packaging based on graphene. This initiative seeks to promote the use of nanomaterials like graphene in food packaging industry, which will allow food to be kept in perfect conditions for a longer period. This groundbreaking product will also reduce the amount of wasted food, thanks to the longer preservation of packaged food. Researchers in this project have created a new material based on paper and polylactic acid (PLA) film, modified with graphene oxide activated by probiotics and nano-Ag-TiO2.
GraFood Project, which will be operational until 2020, is promoted by a consortium including companies and research organisations form Romania, Italy, Slovenia and Spain, and it will be funded with 800,000 € by the M-ERANET 2016 European programme. Researchers from Andaltec will be leading the Validation Work Package to develop the new film packaging prototype activated with the aforementioned nanomaterial.
Julian Parra, Head of the European Projects Office in Andaltec, states that ‘their aim is transferring all the advantages provided by nanomaterials like carbon nanostructures to the food industry. Graphene is a material with high functional properties which is being currently applied to several different fields successfully. Thus, we are going to work hard so that final consumers and food industries can profit from them. Our goal is producing packaging with higher food safety which, at the same time, helps companies to improve their competitiveness through a cost reduction in their products’ life cycle’.
Andaltec’s involvement in this European project means a further step in the international expansion strategy launched by the technological centre based in Martos (Spain). In fact, Andaltec offers technological services to companies from different countries and is increasing its participation in international projects, focused on different aspects such as development of active and smart packaging, new materials based on recyclable and degradable bioplastics, as well as new operation processes, being the case of laser metal-plastic bonding, with wide applications in automotive or aeronautics, as well as renewable energy industries. At present, the technological centre is engaged in several European projects, such as Cost-Multicomp (Network of experts in the development of new nanocarbon-based composite materials intended to the improvement of properties like thermal, electric, mechanical and optical conductivity); Life rPack2L (enhancement of the recycling system for multilayer plastic packaging in the food industry) or CVP4ALL (development of solar concentrators for urban areas).