Projects

Mandala is a research and innovation project funded under Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking with a consortium of 12 institutions from five European countries, Italy, Spain, Norway, Greece and Croatia. The project starts on 1 June 2019 and is expected to end on 30 November 2022. Recycling has become one of the most important challenges of this century, but with the present unsustainable, post-consumption scenario statistics show that we are still far from reaching the optimum goal of a circular economy. The MANDALA project proposes a sustainable solution, which will promote the concept of a circular economy. The European project MANDALA presents a sustainable solution for the plastic packaging sector, focusing on 3 fundamental pillars: eco-design, dual functionality and end of life, with the aim of finding a sustainable and effective solution for multi-layer packaging in the medium term, insofar as recycling conventional plastic materials as well as the use of biopolymers. MANDALA will develop a sustainable packaging format, which in addition to satisfying business needs thanks to its barrier properties, its design will facilitate recycling as it will be possible to separate the multiple layers through the development of a thermo-reversible adhesive. The MANDALA project is an ambitious project that will be executed over the next 42 months with a budget of over four million euros, co-financed by the Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program. The project consortium consists of 12 entities from 5 different countries: Spain, Norway, Croatia, Greece and Italy, bringing together 4 technology centres, 2 large companies, 5 SMEs and 1 Agrifood Cluster. Bio-mi is involved in designing new materials and packaging. In focus of this project are high barrier primary food packaging and secondary packaging for carpets and garments. BIO-MI will up-scale the production of MANDALA film reels. It will be the first SME to directly exploit the new bio & recycled polyesters and polyolefins. MANDALA is an opportunity to continue working in new packaging solutions with advanced and tuned properties that are environment friendly. More information is available on the official project website and the CORDIS portal