Sustainable Packaging Project to Help Innovation Business

The Packaging Innovation Cluster has obtained the approval of three new national projects to improve the management of reusable containers, develop a new system to automate work in factories and implement the use of reusable containers in the Food Service sector.

These projects will allow to boost the economic development and the digital transformation of companies, and have a total budget close to one million euros. They are part of the 2022 line of grants aimed at Innovative Business Groups (AEI), and have been approved by the General Directorate of Industry and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

Specifically, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism is promoting these grants within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, through the Next Generation Funds that the European Commission has made available to administrations for economic recovery after the pandemic.

Improving the management of reusable containers

On the one hand, the project ‘Track & Trace Reuse. Development of an Application for the traceability and control of the use of industrial packaging’ focuses on the creation of a collaborative computer application for the traceability and control of reusable industrial packaging. This solution will make the management of reusable containers more sustainable.

Specifically, the resulting web application will facilitate collaboration between partners and create a shared knowledge repository that will ensure sectoral centralization and improve the management of reusable containers. In turn, this will have an impact on improving the competitiveness of the entities involved, in addition to improving the positioning of SMEs outside their reusable packaging management areas.

The Cluster coordinates this project, which has the participation of the companies Nettrim Technology, Heura Gestió Ambiental, Cluster of ICT, Electronics and Telecommunications Companies of Aragon (TECNARA).

A new productivity 4.0 system

On the other hand, with the project 'IMOP. Advanced model for the automatic Imputation of Labor to manufactured Product’ a system for locating personnel in the factory will be developed, with automatic imputation of hours to the manufacturing order, through the combination of 4.0 technologies. This new solution will turn data into information and knowledge, connecting productivity, real costs, quality, traceability and human resources.

Currently there is no system that uses wireless technologies for this purpose in factories. The current methodology is through disjointed processes, which means that the numbers often do not add up, with the consequences that this entails for companies.

The result will be an innovative solution for indoor localization, with the development of a tool capable of learning and correcting the location of the subject. This initiative, also coordinated by the Cluster, has the participation of the companies TST, MESbook, CLR and Gráficas Lersi, and the collaboration of the Toy Valley Cluster of Innovative Companies (CEIV).

Use of reusable containers in Foodservice

Finally, the third project in which the Packaging Innovation Cluster is involved is in cooperation with the Foodservice Cluster of Catalonia, through a consortium in which Bûmerang, Ecogots, Inèdit and Areas also participate. And it is that in the Foodservice sector the measures to move towards a more sustainable packaging are of vital importance, due to the large number of materials and packaging that are used.

Thus, the Road to Reuse (ROR) project seeks the implementation of a Deposit, Refund and Return (SDDR) system in the main catering establishments in travel environments through a client-API-microservices architecture (App). In this sense, the main objective of the project is to promote the reuse of food packaging in the catering sector through IoT technology. Visit website to find more information about reusable packaging such cardboard sleeve and sustainable packaging automation solutions.

The first pilot phase of the project is being implemented in establishments SUCH as Que Areas, located at Sants station in Barcelona and Atocha in Madrid; and the Dots establishment, also located at the Madrid station. Specifically, in these three establishments, which have an annual traffic of approximately 2 million customers and a potential of 5.7 million, Areas is putting up for sale Take Away 30% of the current salads with returnable containers, one of the best-selling products in this category. With this, it is planned to reduce the volume of materials in these containers by 30%, which is equivalent to more than 44,000 salad units per year.

All these projects are co-financed by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism (MINCOTUR) through the second call for AEIs of 2022 within the framework of the Next Generation grants and the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

Zixin Yuan - Digital Marketing Coordinator at ÉLITER Packaging Machinery Website: https://www.eliter-packaging.com