The BIO-BOARD project will develop a sustainable protein-based coating system using agricultural waste like whey and potato residues as raw materials to replace polyethylene coatings on paper and paperboard packaging. The project involves research partners from Germany, Italy, Spain and industrial partners across Europe. It aims to produce more recyclable packaging materials that reduce fossil fuel dependency and offer similar performance to conventional plastics. The coating will be tailored for extrusion on paper and tested to validate its suitability for food packaging to replace plastics and facilitate improved recycling.

1. PROJECTFACTSHEET
Dr.Ing Elodie Bugnicourt
IRIS SL
Innovació i Recerca Industrial i Sostenible
Spain
ebugnicourt@iris.cat
PROJECT COORDINATOR:
Ms.Sylvia Osipof
REA
Research Executive Agency
Brussels
Sylvia.OSIPOF@ec.europa.eu
FRAUNHOFER, Germany
UNIPI University of Pisa, Italy
Innovació i Recerca Industrial i Sostenible, Spain
RTD PARTNERS:
SME PARTNERS:
Federation of the Food & Drink Industries of
the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Meierei-Genossens eG, Germany
Food Machinery Company, UK
LAJOVIC TUBA EMBALAŽA d.d.o, Slovenia
Gascogne Laminates, France
LUCENSE SCpA, Italy
Slovenian Plastechnics Cluster, Slovenia
Lleters de Catalunya, Spain
SETBIR-Union of Dairy, Beef, Food
Industrialists and Producers of Turkey,
Turkey
Food Industry Association Austria, Austria
Tetra Pak Packaging Solutions AB, Sweden
ABSTRACT:
About 7 million tons of coated paper, paperboard and cardboard are currently manufactured
annually worldwide. The standard coating material is petrochemical based polyethylene
(PE). Typical laminate packaging contains about 20 mass percent of this material.
Increased political, legislative and consumer pressure to reduce the dependency on fossil
fuel based plastics, but also to produce recyclable solutions, poses a major challenge for
packaging producers to seek alternative materials that do not harm the environment in their
manufacture and end of life, are based on a sustainable resource, and offer similar
performance to their conventional plastic counterparts. To this end, there is a great need to
provide producers of coated paper, paperboard and cardboard manufacturers with a
bio-based material that will enable them to substitute much of the currently used PE coating
without compromising the humidity barrier properties of the resulting packaging materials
and overcoming the current challenge to the recycling of such packaging.
The BIO-BOARD project will build on past research that has revealed that whey protein
coating can provide bio-degradable plastic layers that can replace existing plastic coatings
in multilayer packaging and enhance their recyclability –by separating the individual
fractions of the multilayer packaging. To this end, a tailored coating system based on the
renewable raw material derived from agrofood waste and its technological application will
be developed for extrusion coating paper, paperboard and cardboard to produce packaging
materials. The base material for the coating will be innovative formulations based on
proteins such as whey and residues from potato. Indeed, as a by-product coming from
cheese production, still 40-50% of the 50 million tons of whey produced annually in Europe
is discarded, while about 65,000 tons of dried fruit juice protein and 140,000 tons of dried
potato pulp are produced during starch production annually within the EU which could be
available for new valorisations.
BIO-BOARD will deliver sustainable coating material and process for paper and paper-board
based packaging. After validating the resulting laminates for their suitability as packaging
material to replace the currently used fossil fuel based plastics (principally PE) in laminate
packaging materials for both solid and liquid food products as well as the resulting
facilitation of the recycling process, the uptake of the novel BIO-BOARD system among the
packaging industry holds benefits for increased environmental protection, consumer
satisfaction and demand in an increasingly environmentally aware market.
PROJECT OFFICER:
BIOBOARDwww.bioboard.eu
01/11/2012 – 31/10/2014
Sustainable protein-
based paper and paper-
board coating systems
for packaging
KEYWORDS:
GA 315313
Paper recyclability, protein-based paper, paper-board, cardboard, extrusion
coating paper, packaging materials, food residues, revalorization.