The European "Leguval" project (www.leguval.eu) has been established to introduce the by-products of processed grain legumes as an economically viable resource in packaging and agricultural material production. Leguval is a three-year research and development project funded by the European Commission’s “Seventh Framework Programme”.

The project aims to address common problems and challenges facing the agro-food value chain, embracing growers, food processors and plastic packaging manufacturing companies, and reducing their dependence on petroleum-based sources. It will provide them with information and technology relating to the use of renewable sources that do not compete with food, and for the valorisation of wastes otherwise devoted to low value application or incineration.

Over the last two years, four European research centres – Italy’s Institute for Chemical and Physical Processes (CNR-iPCF, Messina; www.ipcf.cnr.it) and Experimental Station for the Food Preserving Industry (SSICA, Parma; www.ssica.it), Spain’s Tecnalia Research and Innovation (Derio; www.tecnalia.com) and Slovenian technology centre Polieko – have been working alongside three business associations – Italian plastics machinery association Assocomaplast (Milan; www.assocomaplast.org), Spanish food association Consebro (Navarra; www.consebro.com) and Slovenian plastics cluster PCS – and five companies linked to the foodstuff and plastics industries (Spain’s Iris and Lagrana, Slovenian Tehnos and Tuba and Romania’s RDX) to find more sustainable and renewable sources for the plastics industry.

Leguval aims to valorise the co- and by-products of legumes by extracting their proteins and fibre so they can be used as a raw material in developing packaging materials and bioplastics for agricultural use, and the remaining biomass as a source of biogas.

Presently, coatings using pea proteins with interesting barrier properties and composites with legume fibres have been obtained and will soon be tested in agricultural and packaging applications, with applications on an industrial scale to be evaluated.