Packaging Redesign and Process Optimisation to Prevent Waste

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Project duration: 2020 to 2022

Menü-Manufaktur is a provider of customised catering systems with frozen and chilled menus and menu components for modern communal catering. Their customers receive catering concepts with various handmade menus and components in different packaging units such as trays (multi-portions) and plates (single portions). They cook many portions a day in their own kitchen, divided into various ranges. This project is about eliminating and avoiding the different packaging systems while maintaining the desired quality.

Plastic packaging in particular should be designed to be recyclable and sustainable. For many food products, there are still no packaging solutions on the market that adequately fulfil both requirements. There is a particular need for action in the area of flexible multilayer packaging: Here, several layers of material combined into films (mainly polymers, paper and aluminium) enable optimised product protection, but at the same time these combinations severely limit mechanical recyclability. In order to maintain the advantages of flexible multilayer packaging, such as optimised product protection and low packaging weight, while at the same time implementing mechanical recyclability, innovative coatings on mono-polyolefin films are being pursued as a solution.

Research Goals

The aim of the project is to avoid waste that arises from (re)packaging as far as possible:

Implementation of reusable meal trays
Conversion of disposable cartons for temporary storage to a suitable reusable system
Conversion of disposable transport cartons to a suitable reusable system
Raising awareness

Funding Partners

Verpackungskoordinierungsstelle gemeinnützige GmbH (VKS) - Funding programme for waste prevention promotion (AVF of collection and recycling systems for packaging (2020 programme))