Abstract
Spoilage of fish due to microbiological activity is one of the biggest problems found by producers to take fresh fish products to customers. It is necessary packaging improvements to be able to increase fish shelf life and, thus, be able to travel further and to keep product freshness longer at customer’s houses. In the present work, a new material is developed for fish packaging in modified atmosphere (MAP). This material is poly(ethylene terephathalate) (PET) extruded with a polyamide (PA) nanocomposite containing nanosepiolite. Here, it is shown the production procedure from laboratory to industrial scale. Permeability to oxygen and impact mechanical properties results are shown for different samples, both at laboratory and industrial processes. At the end, a material composition is chosen to produce the finale tray which will contain the sliced sea bream. Microbiological analysis is done over the packed fish, resulting is a lower microbiological count compared to a PET control sample. This means that shelf life of pack sea bream could increase from 2–4 to 7–9 days, which is very important for both producers and customers. On the other hand, trays obtained comply with European regulations in food contact materials (FCM) and, overall, they are suitable for food packaging materials.
Highlights
Food waste is an increasingly important problem nowadays
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results of the poly(ethylene terephathalate) (PET)/PA/nS nanocomposites show the percentage of sepiolite in the samples (Table 2)
This could be attributed, as well as explained for the laboratory results, to PET matrix degradation together with a poor PA_MXD6/nS particles dispersion, as seen in the MO pictures, and a high degree of crystallization of the PET matrix [9,13,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32] due to the incorporation of the PA-nS particles. These results are better compared to those obtained in a laboratory extruder, probably due to a lower matrix degradation in the industrial extruder. Comparing these results with those previously obtained by these authors [33] for a PET/nS sheet, in which the sepiolite was modified with AMEO as well, it can be observed there was a decrease in maximum force and puncture energy, indicating a PET matrix crystallization due to PA incorporation [24]
Summary
Food waste is an increasingly important problem nowadays. It affects the economy, and the sustainability of the food system. Food packaging containers must comply with several requirements such as: protect, preserve, inform, and help to sell the product packed (marketing). These containers must follow EU regulations for food contact products [2], including good manufacturing practices [3] and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) requirements. This industry is in continuous development, looking to reduce costs, reduce environmental impact, improve mechanical properties and increase shelf life of the products. The MAP works by inhibiting bacterial growth and oxidative reactions in the food, the extend of preservation depends on species, initial microbial population, fat content, gas mixture, and the ratio of gas volume to product volume, and storage temperature [4]
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