17 April 2024 – The project partners of the LEAP project, supported by Norway Grants under the Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme, organised a public presentation of the project’s achievements at the Pulp and Paper Institute in Ljubljana earlier this month.
The project coordinator, Gregor Čepon from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, welcomed the attendees of the closing event and summarised the LEAP project, the roles of the participating project partners and announced the presentation of the results. He pointed out that the project “seeks to develop high-performance packaging solutions that are able to withstand the weight of different transport loads, while at the same time trying to address the problem of raw material through the use of invasive plants in the production of this solution”.
The project partners have focused on the production of durable protective packaging from invasive non-native plants such as Japanese knotweed, Giant goldenrod and Canadian goldenrod. They presented a collection point in Maribor, where they set up three different containers to collect the invasive plants that will be used in the packaging process. The idea to produce such packaging was born seven or eight years ago with the project partner – Gorenje. They wanted to produce a paper-based packaging solution. The process of producing an effective and robust protective packaging was full of attempts, even unsuccessful ones, to achieve results. The current results allow the production of protective packaging that can be recycled and reused several times. They also highlighted the product’s effectiveness and ability to absorb and absorb pressure and shock.
The closing event was joined virtually by the Norwegian project partner, dr. Jawad Elomari, SINTEF AS, who presented the biomass collection process and gave a sustainability assessment of the transition from EPS to paper-based packaging. He pointed out that “the biomass collection process has clearly been improved in the LEAP project, which is also evident from the sample comparison.”
Dr. Urška Kavčič from the Pulp and Paper Institute presented the development of molded pulp protective packaging made from lignocellulosic biomass. Cellulosic fibres were produced from locally sourced invasive plants. She further explained the process from the extraction of the invasive plants to fibres that are effective for use and their role in the development of protective packaging.
Gregor Čepon from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, presented the e-info point platform and the open-source expert system for designing paper-based packaging. He emphasised that now “all the knowledge behind the development process has been gathered. All the data and research results can be downloaded from the platform to your computer and further refined.”
Representative of the project partner Gorenje Ltd, dr. Aleš Mihelič presented the challenges in designing sustainable paper packaging for household appliances. He pointed out that “Gorenje’s cooperation with other stakeholders has so far been unsuccessful, as companies have mainly developed smaller protective paper packaging, which is neither suitable nor efficient for the transport and delivery of the heavier electronic devices produced by Gorenje. The LEAP project has produced efficient and sustainable packaging, which has been tirelessly tested and refined with project partners until the current results”.
The LEAP project involves the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana as the project promoter and project partners Pulp and Paper Institute, Gorenje Ltd, Surovina, Waste processing company Ltd, and SINTEF AS from Norway.
VIR: Projekt LEAP