NU-PACK

Nuts and seeds are seasonal products. Nevertheless, consumers expect them to be available all year round. In order to fulfil this demand and maintain the quality of nuts over a long period of time, a great deal of packaging effort is required. The oxygen and water vapour barrier play a key role in maintaining quality.

The project provides important information on the oxygen tolerance of hazelnuts, representative of other nuts and oleaginous seeds, which is of great benefit to both the food and packaging industries. A quick determination of the quality and identification of oxidative pre-damage of hazelnuts enables raw material and food manufacturers to optimise packaging, storage and minimum shelf life information for specific batches. As an example of a solid, oxidation-sensitive foodstuff, the methods and models developed in the project can also be transferred to other types of nuts and nut products or fatty foods such as coffee beans, sausages and pastes with minimal effort. By providing a quick method for determining quality based on non-destructive measurement with NIR/MIR, the user can quickly estimate the shelf life of products in different packaging with different barriers. Calibration is based on a multivariate statistical data evaluation of physico-chemical parameters such as fatty acid composition, FFA, antioxidants, POZ and volatile fat oxidation products, as well as IR spectra. This enables nut manufacturers to measure the quality of their goods and use a modelling tool to control the shelf life of the nuts by adapting the choice of packaging.

Packaging manufacturers can offer or develop optimised/sustainable packaging concepts based on the findings, with the aim of achieving maximum quality retention, but also recyclability. Customers from the food sector can also be better advised on the necessary packaging properties, which increases the opportunities for cooperation. This results in a positive contribution to quality assurance, shelf life extension and resource conservation by avoiding product losses and oversized packaging.