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Food packaging

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Food packaging

Context

Packaging has a crucial role in the food supply chain as it is an essential element to address the challenges of sustainable food consumption. Food packaging has the ability to reduce food waste by protecting and preserving the quality and safety of food products throughout the desired shelf-life.

The European Green Deal sets important goals to further advance the sustainable transition of the food packaging value chain, including:

  • Ensuring that all packaging in the EU market is reusable or recyclable in an economically viable manner by 2030;
  • Defining measures to reduce packaging waste;
  • Promoting the incorporation of recycled content in packaging materials.

While the concept of circular food packaging has been taken up by various initiatives, its implementation remains limited due to the high degree of required cross-chain collaboration.

The need for such cross-chain collaboration is even more necessary taking into account other important trends in food packaging being the transition towards smart packaging in close relation with optimal logistics processes, traceability and shelf-life monitoring. To accelerate the transition towards sustainable food packaging, intense cross-sectorial cooperation and investments along the whole food packaging chain (e.g., food processors, packaging suppliers, logistics, retailers, etc.), are essential!

Year established: 2022

Regions (lead and partner)

  • Leading regions: Pack4Food, Flanders (BE), Leading partner is Flanders’ FOOD, Flanders (BE), and co-leading partner is Natureef, Zachodniopomorskie (PL)
  • Participating regions: Wallonia (BE), Catalonia (ES), Galicia (ES), Navarra (ES), Hungary (HU), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Slovenia (Sl), Auvergne (FR), Rhone-Alpes (FR), Bourgogne (FR), Franche-Comté (FR), Bretagne (FR), Pays de la Loire (FR), Normandy (FR), Emilia Romagna (IT) Helsinki-Uusimaa (FI), Scania region (SE)

Mission

The mission of the Partnership is to catalyse the transition to a resilient and sustainable European food packaging value chain, highlighting the 5 R’s - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Renewable – through facilitating interregional collaboration and knowledge exchange, focusing on sustainable innovations.

The vision of the partnership is to strive for a resilient European interregional cross-sectorial ecosystem that leverages circular food packaging, reduces losses, and maintains food quality and safety.

Objectives

The objectives of the partnership are focused on:

  • Networking
    • Establishing a trust zone between the Partnership members to strengthen bonds and foster strong interregional collaboration
    • Setting up interregional collaboration projects in the field of food packaging
    • Connecting, collaborating and exchanging best practices with other S3 partnerships and European food packaging initiatives and associations
    • Strengthen regional penta-helix ecosystems (i.e. Industrial stakeholders, RTO’s, government, consumers and ngo’s, investors)
  • Sharing Knowledge and best practices (technical and services) among the members of the Partnership to support the penta-helix ecosystem in sustainable innovation and investments in the field of food packaging
  • Policy: Promoting harmonization of food packaging-related policies across Europe
  • Identifying gaps in technological infrastructure and modelling tools based on the European food packaging value chain needs to determine where investments are required

Main activities

The main activities of the partnership relate to the objectives outlined including those related to networking, knowledge exchange and sharing, policy promotion, and gap analysis related to the value chain to identify where investments are needed.

The partnership will also aim to benefit from select services offered by the S3 CoP Secretariat to complement the activities, as outlined in the figure below.

food-packaging-figure

Organisations involved

Belgium:

  • Pack4Food (BE)
  • Flanders’ FOOD (BE)
  • Wagralim (BE)

Finland:

  • CLIC Innovation Oy (FI)

France:

  • Polymeris (FR)
  • Bretagne Développement Innovation (BDI) (FR)
  • Valorial (FR)
  • Ligépack (FR)
  • Vitagora (FR)

Hungary:

  • OMNIPACK (HU)

Italy:

  • Clust-ER Agrifood (IT)

Latvia:

  • Food products quality Cluster (LV)

Lithuania:

  • Lithuanian food exporters association (LitMEA) (LT)

Poland:

  • Natureef Association (PL)

Slovenia:

  • CCIS-CAFÉ (SI)

Spain:

  • Packaging Cluster (ES)
  • NAGRIFOOD (ES)
  • Clusaga (ES)

Sweden:

  • Packbridge (SE)

Shared smart specialisation areas

Sustainable Food Packaging in a Circular economy. Focusing on the 5R’s of food packaging: Refuse-Reduce-Reuse-Recycle-Renewable

Related projects

  • Value4Pack - Bridging investment opportunities to achieve the resilient European food packaging value chain. Value4Pack originates from the S3 Partnership Food Packaging with the aim of strengthening the capacity, competitiveness and resilience of stakeholders in the European food packaging value chain, in particular in less developed regions, and their ability to address societal, environmental and economic challenges. Value4Pack will boost innovation and investment capacity in the European food packaging value chain by building an interregional resilient innovations ecosystem between its relevant penta-helix actors (i.e. industry – RTO’s – investors – regional authorities – consumers and NGOs). Weblinks:

Contact

Latest news and upcoming events

Partner meetings:

  • December 2022 in Barcelona
  • June 2023 online
  • December 2023: online, exchanging knowledge of running/submitted projects related to food packaging
  • May 2024: meeting in Brussels (BE)
  • June 2024: online meeting
  • November 25th 2024: First general assembly meeting in Budapest (HU)

Other:

  • March 2024: I3 coordinators days in Brussels (BE)
  • May 2024: Booth at EU cluster conference in Brussels (BE)

Value4Pack events:

  • December 2023-March 2024: Regional workshops to map and analyze the regional food packaging value chain
  • June – September 2024: Call for project ideas
  • 26 November2024: Pitching event in Budapest (HU): Value4Pack Cooperation Proposals - Pitch-event
  • 2 October 2025: Final event in Ghent (BE)