Objective
The requirement to innovate in terms of new composite materials responds to increasing consumer demands for attractive and differentiated packaging in the food and beverage sectors. To this end, the project seeks to develop polymer coated steel sheet systems and design new container configurations, together with appropriate industrially applicable forming processes, to allow steel based containers to compete more effectively with alternative systems. The commercial advantages offered by the use of coated sheet material include the elimination of washing and lacquering operations with both cost and environmental advantages, highly adaptive formability and shaping properties, resistance to a wide range of fillings and external corrosion, as well as excellent shelf presence. It is widely recognised that there are strong environmental arguments in favour of steel for packaging. Firstly, all steel packaging (including coated products) is fully recyclable and in terms of consumer health issues, the advantages of steel cans for tamper-proof and safe long-term storage of foods and beverages are well proven and universal in European societies. The objectives of the work programme are to utilise and further develop existing experimental and computational instruments and expertise available to the partners in order to provide the knowledge necessary forth can making industry to develop large-scale production processes for attractive and novel can designs manufactured from both existing and new types of polymer coated sheet stock. The main project output will take the form of a body of research knowledge based on validated computational decision support instruments and experimental test data, complemented by the results of validation of the industrial prototype forming of polymer coated sheet material and appraisal of different forming processes.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP6-2002-NMP-1
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Funding Scheme
STREP - Specific Targeted Research ProjectCoordinator
SWANSEA
United Kingdom