FreshPack – new business from research ideas

We are excited to start our new research and commercialization project “FreshPack” since the beginning of September 2019. The project aims to identify the market potential and create new business from the research idea developed by the Food Materials Science Research Group. Assist. Prof. Kirsi Mikkonen leads this project and other members of the team are Project Planner Emmi Korjus, Doctoral Student Jaison Sithole, Commercialization Officer Petri Junttila, Prof. Maija Tenkanen, Postdoctoral Researcher Elina Jääskeläinen, and Prof. Johanna Björkroth.

Almost half of the global fruit and vegetable production is lost as food waste. FreshPack fights this problem with a novel active packaging component that maintains the quality, microbial safety, and freshness of plant-based products and therefore improves their shelf-life. We have started the further development of our active component along with testing it as part of the existing distribution chain. The component is bio-based and works well in both open and sealed packages.

In September, Emmi and Petri participated in the Smart Packaging Conference in Hamburg, Germany, which was a great kick-off for the project. The conference brought together other active and intelligent technology developers, brand owners, packaging producers, and processing experts to discuss new opportunities and applications for intelligent and active packaging. Among many good presentations, there were speakers from some companies targeting to solve similar problems as FreshPack. It was fruitful to explore the field and see different approaches and solutions to the same challenge.

Follow us for updates along the way from a great invention towards even greater commercial product!

Source of the fruit picture: Uni Material Bank