FoodPackLab visiting the AIPIA World Congress 2019

In November, our FoodPackLab consortium member Packaging Cluster, as well as one of our collaborating clusters Pack4Food,  had the opportunity to attend the AIPIA World Congress 2019, the Intelligent Packaging Congress held in Amsterdam.

This annual congress is managed by the Intelligent Packaging Association of the Netherlands and enjoyed a great participation of more than 350 attendees this year.

The AIPIA World Congress is highlighted by its dynamism, since you could visit different stands where the Association’s partners exhibited their latest technologies focused on the packaging sector. At the same time, you could find up to 3 presentations taking place at the same time talking about several smart applications in the sector. The big topics of the presentations were: Smart Packaging, sustainability trends in food packaging, smart labels, NFC Technologies, RFID, QR…., Internet of Things, Augmented Reality… among many other issues that generated a lot of debate.

One of the most interesting parts of this 2-days event was the session of Abbott Laboratories and Coca-Cola, launching challenges for companies / freelancers and start-ups.

Abbott launched the challenge: “to develop connected sanitary packaging to offer trust, credibility and digital sustainability to create long-term added value, in a sustainable way”. 11 companies proposed solutions to this challenge and finally Abbott’s, represented by its, scored several possible solutions, selecting Systech and Arylia as winners, with whom they have committed to collaborate on these solutions.

On the other hand, Coca-Cola challenged several companies to look for new ways to recycle their plastic packaging or what improvement they could make in the packaging for the EU 2030 Objectives on the circular economy. In this challenge, 9 companies with different solutions were presented and the winners were Recycl3r, Hyve Connect and ST Microelectronics. The Coca-Cola team promised to work with these companies to face possible solutions internally.

All in all, it was a great chance to meet in between the project partners discussing the different topics that came out during the congress.