BIOSEALING

The reduction of plastic waste, increasing regulatory pressure, particularly from the European Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD), as well as growing sustainability demands from consumers and retailers present major challenges for the packaging industry. Many materials available on the market are still classified as plastics under the SUPD and therefore do not meet the definition of “plastic-free.” At the same time, available plastic-free alternatives often have shortcomings in key functional properties such as barrier performance, sealability, or flexibility, or, like paper and cardboard, are only suitable for select applications.
The goal of the BIOSEALING project is to develop plastic-free, thermoplastically processable packaging materials based on natural polymers that, for the first time, enable a practical combination of oxygen barrier, flexibility, and reliable sealability. The developed material systems are intended to meet the functional and process-related requirements of industrial packaging applications and to be processed on standard compounding, extrusion, and packaging lines without the use of chemically modified polymers.
To this end, BIOSEALING pursues a material- and process-oriented research approach in which proteins and polysaccharides are specifically combined and formulated so that they can be thermoplastically processed. A particular focus is on the use of natural raw materials from by-products and waste streams of the food and agricultural industries to further enhance sustainability and resource efficiency. The developed formulations are transferred to industrial-scale compounding and flat film extrusion processes and evaluated for their processability and suitability for sealing applications. The goal is to provide robust material and process concepts for plastic-free, flexible packaging.