Bio and fibre-based Stand-Up Pouch

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The food packaging market is the focus of research and development by INN-PRESSME’s Finnish partner VTT. Food packaging, which protects against external influences such as moisture and light, is still mainly produced from numerous non-sustainable fossil materials. Multiple layers of plastics or metals make it impossible to recycle or biodegrade them. As part of the INN-PRESSME project, Finnish researchers and developers have further developed the production of stand-up pouches using biological nanofibres. The aim is to replace all fossil materials in the packaging and produce it in such a way that it can be easily recycled.

Together with the INN-PRESSME partners WALKI, FRAUNHOFER ISC and RISE, they ensure production safety and the requirements of industrial production sizes. The SUTCO coating machine specially developed by VTT took the team a big step forward. The SUTCO process has so far been used to test PLA-X, cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) biobased hybrid nanomaterials on thin paper. In the so-called thin-film coating processes, the results indicate that the industrial quantities can be achieved.

Facts & Figures

  • Multilayer coating done on two different base papers using: 
    • PLA-X (crosslinkable PLA-based aqueous dispersion)
    • CNC (cellulose nanocrystals)
    • bioORMOCER® (biodegradable inorganic nanoparticles stabilized by biopolymers )
  • Traditional coating methods such as gravure coating can be used to apply these materials into multilayer structures
  • Low coat weight and coating thickness (below 12 g/m2 and 8 µm) for all three layers combined
  • Promising barrier properties at 23 °C/ 50% RH
  • OTR as low as 0.8 – 2 cc/(m2.day.bar)
  • Excellent grease and mineral oil barrier
  • Good heat-sealing properties
TestCases-factsheets_06_02Download

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