In an article published on August 8, 2017 by news provider Plastics News Europe, reporter Richard Higgs informed about a project entitled MIPLASCOE, aiming to transform a large portion of Spain’s orange peel waste into bioplastic juice bottles and extruded profiles. The project is a collaboration between Spanish companies J. Garcia Carrion (wine and juice producer), Agrocode (bioscience firm), Canagrosa (research laboratory), Plastipak (plastic bottle moulder), Lisanplast (profile extruder), and Azvi (civil and rail engineering), as well as the University of Seville, the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and AIMPLAS, Spain’s plastics technology institute. Spain is Europe’s leading producer of orange and other fruit juices. The waste from this industry “currently undergoes energy intensive processing into animal feed pellets or is consigned to landfill,” Higgs explained. In the scope of MIPLASCOE, different monomers will be extracted from the citrus waste material by microbial fermentation and bio-polyester synthesis, with the ultimate goal ”to create value added products from the waste.” The project is expected to be completed by December 2018, having developed a number of end products such as “injection blow moulded plastic bottles for the citrus juice industry and extruded profiles for use in the railway sector,” Higgs noted.
Read more
Richard Higgs (August 8, 2017). “Squeezing value from orange peel waste.” Plastics News Europe
AIMPLAS (July 6, 2017). “Bioplastics for the railway sector and the orange juice packaging from wastes of the juice industry.”
