Issue 04/2016

Blow Moulding
Bio-packaging of
liquid dairy products
Environmental, economic, safety and regulatory
Definition of requirements and selection of materials
Development of bottle packages
for liquid dairy products
Figure 1: BIOBOTTLE work scheme
Reactive extrusion
Validation at pilot plant scale
Industrial scale up
and product validation
Figure 2: Negative search for pathogenic bacteria
Development of pouches,
lids and caps
The aim of the BIOBOTTLE project is to develop new
biodegradable materials suitable to obtain plastic bottles
and pouches for dairy products; probiotics, fresh
milk and shakes. These packages do not need to be separated
of the rest of the organic waste at the end of their
short shelf-life.
The new packages keep the shelf-life of selected dairy
products in comparison with traditional packages as well
as fulfill different characteristics based on functional,
microbiological, legal requirements for food contact
applications in each case study.
In addition, the new materials are suitable to be
processed by traditional plastic processing methods, such
as blown film coextrusion, extrusion blow moulding and
injection moulding to obtain pouches, bottles and caps,
respectively. The materials are completely biodegradable
under controlled composting conditions (ISO 14885-1:2005)
and are harmless after biodegradation according to the
Compostability Standard, EN 13432.
Market Data
The worldwide output of plastics increases each year,
but the management of plastic disposal has no satisfactory
environmentally friendly solution at the moment because
landfilling is still the first option in many countries [1].
As a consequence of this problem, there has been an
increased interest in using alternative materials such as
biodegradable bioplastics.
Nowadays, the European countries are the biggest
consumer of milk products in the world, with an average
of 219 kg per year (FAO, 2011). Therefore, the use of biomaterials
to package dairy products is especially interesting
for both dairy and plastic industries as well as for the endusers
since the packages can be managed in composting
conditions with the rest of the organic wastes.
Requirements of bio-packages
The requirements that the packages for dairy products
must fulfil are shown in table 1.
According to these requirements, one of the main
difficulties overcame by the researches of the project, was
the thermal limitations of the commercial biodegradable
materials, which showed thermal resistances around
65 ºC. The compounding process has been carried out using
reactive extrusion technology, which lead to the development
of different bio-compounds suitable to obtain the packages
used in thermal treatments such as the sterilization or
pasteurization processes that reach temperatures up to
90 – 95 ºC. The bio-compounds are different PLA based biopolyesters
with renewable content between 20 and 45 %.
Figure 1 shows the development work in the BIOBOTTLE
project.
12 bioplastics MAGAZINE [04/16] Vol. 11