Project

Call for Partners | Edible Packaging and Controlling Moisture in Food (EDPACK)

Edible packaging has extensive opportunities to enable further development of sustainable and safe food chains, while reducing food losses and (secondary) packaging requirements. However, further improvements are needed such as controlling moisture in food. This is usually obtained through coatings and films with excellent barrier properties towards water which prevents dehydration.

Problem identification and/or opportunity

Currently predominantly animal- and fossil-derived casings are used for edible packaging. These materials have disadvantages such as their environmental footprint and a poor fit with novel plant-based foods. The currently available vegan edible casings for, for instance plant-based meat analogues are still underdeveloped.

Specifically to control the shelf life of foods, controlling moisture is imperative. Improved edible films, casings and coatings are needed that can control the moisture content in foods and are less vulnerable to rupture or breaking during processing.

Additionally, we need consumer awareness and acceptation of the edible coatings, casings/ and films.

Focus and objective

What do we want to do?

  1. Replace fossil based plastics by edible sustainable casings and coatings;
  2. Improve water-vapour barrier properties of films and coatings to increase the shelf life of food;
  3. Quantify the moisture barrier properties and prediction of the effect of using the developed barriers on food product quality and shelf life;
  4. Prototype and upscale the most promising casings and coatings by the partners;
  5. Techno-economic and sustainability analysis of the most interesting developments;
  6. Evaluate consumer acceptance of edible coatings and casings.

We welcome partners to join our EDPACK initiative who would like to replace their
packaging by sustainable edible packaging and/or to improve the properties of
their (existing) edible packaging (mechanical properties, barrier properties).
Also providers of equipment and raw materials for edible packaging are invited.
In return for in-cash and in-kind contributions to the project, partners can propose
topics for the project and to provide direction to the research activities.