The evaluation committee recognized the Bio4Pack – Biodegradable Bio-based Bioactive Packaging Technology for Supporting Food Safety project as a solution that can revolutionise the production of safe and ecological packaging for food products.
Our goal is to develop biodegradable, bioactive packaging that, thanks to the use of bacteriophages, will limit the development of microorganisms responsible for food spoilage and foodborne infections, especially Salmonella – explains Dr Karolina Rudnicka (Associate Professor at the University of Lodz), who led the consortium during the work on the project application and will coordinate the activities of the international research team for the next 48 months. – In this way, we want to extend the shelf life of meat products (poultry), reduce the amount of plastic waste and reduce the need to use antibiotics.
The assumptions of the Pathfinder Challenges programme also include broad and close cooperation with other teams that have received funding as part of the competition in order to exchange experiences and create innovations between projects, building the so-called portfolio of new solutions in the area of biodegradable materials.
Obtaining funds under the Horizon Europe – EIC Pathfinder Challenges programme is a great honour for the entire consortium – out of 401 submitted projects, only 31 received funding, and Bio4Pack was one of 6 winning projects under challenge 3, concerning innovative packaging materials. It should be underlined that this is the first project in the history of the EIC Pathfinder Challenges competition, coordinated by a Polish institution.
The work did not start at the time of preparing the application, but several years earlier. The success is based on the experience that the University of Lodz team has gained during the implementation of other projects, improving the management and communication model in interdisciplinary research, such as TEAM-NET (FNP), TechMatStrateg (NCBiR), Lider (NCBiR) and scientific networks COST EuroMicroPh
– comments dr hab. Przemysław Płociński, who is responsible for disseminating the project results.
The Bio4Pack project is not only about research and commercialisation of its results, but also activities to disseminate knowledge, among other things, about ways to reduce plastic in our environment, in the form of training webinars and hackathons, addressed to students and doctoral candidates. Activities to popularise knowledge and commercialisation are planned throughout the project implementation period, so we will gradually inform about them and encourage active participation
– adds Dr Natalia Ratajczyk from the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, University of Lodz.
This is a result of intensive work by the research group from the University of Lodz, which played a key role in preparing the application and creating a complementary team of specialists. It was of key importance to link the roles and needs of all partners and to be guided by the competition assumptions. We have thousands of emails and corrections behind us, several revolutions while writing the application and hundreds of hours spent at consortium meetings. A demanding but exciting research and implementation journey as well as cooperation on many levels is what is ahead of us
– concludes Prof. Karolina Rudnicka from the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, University of Lodz.
The international project consortium includes:
- University of Lodz
- Wrocław University of Science and Technology
- University of Gdańsk
- Proteon Pharmaceuticals S.A.
- Universiteit Hasselt – Faculteit Industriële Ingenieurswetenschappen (Leuven, Belgium)
- Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal
- Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos y Nutrición ICTAN-CSIC (Spain)
- TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia).
Source: Horizon Europe – EIC Pathfinder Challenges
Edit: Press Office, University of Lodz