BASF (Ludwigshafen / Germany; www.basf.com) and Italian packaging manufacturer Fabbri (Vignola; www.gruppofabbri.com) have jointly developed a new stretch film for fresh food packaging. Fabbri has produced “Nature Fresh”, which uses the German chemicals group’s certified compostable and bio-based polymer “Ecovio”.

Nature Fresh is a compostable alternative to cling films made of PVC and polyethylene used in fresh food packaging. It is suitable to package meat, seafood, fruit and vegetables manually or with automatic packaging equipment. The product is compliant with European and US standards on food-contact materials and can be composted together with any home food waste. The Italian group’s new film can be used on stretch wrapping machines. Fabbri has also made the new “Automatic NF” packaging machine for easy processing of Nature Fresh.

The packaging material has tensile strength, elongation at break, elastic recovery and anti-fogging features equivalent to PVC-based films. It offers better water vapour transmission than PE, a feature which helps to extend fresh food shelf life, said BASF. Nature Fresh comes in four formats – as rolls for manual or automatic packaging machines in industrial food packaging, for cutter boxes in hotels, restaurants and catering services, as jumbo rolls for converters and as rolls for end-consumer hand-wrapping applications.