Food Hub Magazine article: Emerging active packaging solutions for food preservation

Agrimax partner IRIS have featured its work on using olive waste to develop polyphenol’s for food preservation in the Italian Food Hub Magazine, ‘Emerging active packaging solution for food preservation’.

Olives are rich in polyphenol, which have excellent antioxidant, anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antihypertensive, and antimicrobial properties. In the spirit of circular economy, they can be extracted from by-products from olive culture and processing such as from olive mill waste water, pips or leaves.

Agrimax project uses another source for olive phenols, such as pomace, a mix of olive peels and bones obtained as a by-product from the oil processing industries. The phenols are extracted using ultrasound technology, as seen in a past issue of the Food Hub magazine, and lyophilized to obtain pure phenols in powder, rich in antioxidant properties. When dissolving the lyophilised compounds in water, the antioxidants power of the extracts is maintained. 

This bio-active powder is currently being used for the development of active packaging solutions for the food industry; in one side, introduced in solution for PHA compostable films coating and, in the other side, compounded and blended with PLA (Polylactic acid) and PBAT (Polybutylene adipate terephthalate) for compostable films extrusion. The release rate and the kinetics of the active on the different packaging are being studied, as well as the microbiological and organoleptic properties, through shelf-life analysis, to quantify the impact of the bio-films on the food industry. Within the scope of AGRIMAX project, the active packaging will be tested with fruits that have different spoilage mechanisms, as strawberries (non-climacteric fruit) and tomatoes (climacteric).   

Read the full article.