The food industry aims to green packaging

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Overview of the conference. Photo: T.D

On May 7, information at the Workshop "Food packaging - Quality control and capturing trends" organized by Ho Chi Minh City Trade and Investment Promotion Center (ITPC) in collaboration with Eurofins Sac Co., Ltd. At the event organized by Hai Dang, Ms. Ho Thi Quyen, Deputy Director of ITPC, said that currently, green growth is an important content of sustainable development, ensuring effective and sustainable economic development while contributing an important part in combating climate change.

Therefore, greening packaging is becoming one of the priorities of the government and stakeholders, becoming an important link in the circular economy. The draft National Action Plan to implement circular economy (NAPCE) also identifies packaging as one of the priority areas for applying circular economy, including packaging used for food and beverage processing of drinking, plastic and chemical production.

“Greening packaging is not simply about following a trend, but the decisive part lies in the efforts of businesses. The selection of packaging materials for beverage products has been put on the calculation table by businesses to ensure product quality, environmental friendliness and highest recyclability," Ms. Ho Thi Quyen said.

Mr. Ly Hoang Hai, General Director of Eurofins Sac Ky Hai Dang Co., Ltd. said that for food products are consumed in the domestic market as well as exported products, in addition to paying attention to quality, consumers also pay attention to quality. Consumers pay special attention to safe product design and packaging, complying with Vietnamese and world standards.

Accordingly, businesses need to heavily invest in research and development, to innovate production technology, use green materials, renewable materials and apply many different solutions in packaging production. This requires businesses to invest capital, time, effort and improve human resources.

Ms. Lieu Ngoc Minh Tuyen, Director of Minh Phat Production and Services Co., Ltd. said that investing in the production of environmentally friendly food packaging still faces many difficulties. One of the major difficulties is changing people's habits from using conventional packaging to biodegradable, environmentally friendly packaging and the problem of the high cost of environmentally friendly biological packaging, so Businesses make products that cannot be sold. In addition, in order to export, businesses must meet extremely strict standards and testing certifications of host countries. Meanwhile, capital resources to invest in production and greening food packaging are very limited, especially for small and medium enterprises.

Therefore, according to Ms. Tuyen, greening food product packaging is not just a business story, but needs support from departments, branches and localities. Such as supporting access to preferential capital, product subsidies...

In addition, within the framework of the conference, experts updated businesses on green packaging trends and sustainable materials for food, and the influence of green consumption trends in choosing packaging materials, and how to manage packaging and label quality through certification of the ZDHC chemical management system in the production of packaging and food contact materials.

Along with that, businesses must pay attention to the food packaging testing process to ensure food safety and compliance with legal regulations; Regulations require businesses that produce and import food packaging to test and declare quality before being put into use...