Spanish plastic-products producer SP Group (Palma del Río; www.spg-pack.com) and compatriot ElPozo Food Group (Alhama de Murcia; www.elpozo.com) have launched an R&D project to develop sustainable and recyclable food packaging. The aim is to market new vacuum and modified-atmosphere monomaterial packaging, which will also contain recycled material, besides additives that provide preservative, antioxidant and antibacterial properties, complying with European Food Safety Authority (EFSA, Parma / Italy; www.efsa.europa.eu) requirements.

The companies are working with Spanish technological centre Andaltec (Martos; www.andaltec.org), which will analyse the legal and technical requirements, as well as the design, process and validation testing, for developing the polymers to be used in the packaging. The project is funded by Spain’s Centre for Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI, Madrid; www.cdti.es).

Andaltec has been involved in several other European food-packaging projects. These include Life rPack2L (improving the recycling system for multilayer plastic food packaging), SusFoFlex (developing smart and sustainable biodegradable packaging) and GraFood (developing graphene-modified packaging to extend the lifespan of food).