High barrier food packaging: convenience or necessity?: opportunity for bioplastics

The barrier properties (gas and moisture) of biobased food packaging materials are still an important issue regarding their introduction onto the market. In order to avoid unnecessary (expensive) testing, food companies make the decision to switch to a new (biobased) film mainly based on the oxygen (OTR) and water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) of their current conventional film, which is performing fine. For food products with a need for high barrier packaging material, this mostly means that biobased materials are not an option (or only at very high cost). But are these high barriers necessary to maintain the quality of the product? Storage tests with biobased packaging materials (mainly cellulose- and PLA-based), performed at Ghent University, showed that several biobased materials had sufficient gas and moisture barrier to guarantee the shelf-life of short, medium and long shelf-life food products, even when materials with lower barrier properties were used. The food products were packed under air or under modified atmosphere in pouches or in trays with a topfilm. The microbial and chemical degradation of the food products was followed up both in the biobased and in the conventional packages