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CAFRE

The Future of Food Packaging

March 2, 2021

The College of Agriculture Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) and Moy Park have formed a sustainable partnership to develop innovative packaging.

Moy Park are currently focussed on developing new and innovative packaging solutions to meet the needs of their retail and own brand customers. 

Matt Harris from Moy Park stated, “We are working in a fast-paced and ever changing environment where there is a need for quick evaluation of our customer needs and implementation of robust packing solutions.  Our developing relationship with CAFRE is supporting our ambition to use objective and consistent test methods, speed up our test results and ultimately help us deliver packaging solutions faster to the marketplace.”

Across the Food and Drink sector there is a significant drive for businesses to meet their own packaging and plastic reduction commitments and those of their retail customers. Commonly these focus around removing excessive packaging, reducing plastic and increasing the inclusion of post-consumer recyclate.  This means that any down gauged or lighter packages needs to be designed to ensure that the consumer still receives the product in excellent condition. “This is where the CAFRE packaging team have been invaluable in helping us with their Distribution Simulation System in their Packaging Centre,” continued Matt.

Ron Gardner, is the Senior Packaging Technologist at The Packaging Centre based at CAFRE’s Loughry Campus. The centre is unique to Northern Ireland and the Distribution Simulation System is just one of many tests that are completed to help industry clients. Ron comments that, “CAFRE’s Packaging Centre is just 25 miles from the Moy Park Technical Centre, so it’s logical that Moy Park have recognised the benefit of having a fully equipped packaging test facility on their doorstep’”.

Moy Park has a team of PiABC (Packaging Industry Awarding Body Company) qualified Technologists including CAFRE graduate, Paul Linden.  Paul has been using innovative oxygen transmission testing equipment with CAFRE.  By using this equipment, it has been possible to rapidly test new packaging using accepted and calibrated standards.  Paul said, “This relationship is a superb example of how industry and CAFRE can collaborate on real and practical Industrial solutions”.

Invest Northern Ireland along with CAFRE are running a series of sustainable packaging webinars entitled The Future of Food Packaging. The next webinar event is on the 25th of March 2021.

For more information and enrolment details on this webinar please visit https://www.investni.com/northern-ireland-business-events