Biopack 2013 discusses recent trends in packaging

Biopack 2013, the international conference organised by SIES Graduate School of Technology, was conducted on 28 February and 1 March, 2013.

07 Mar 2013 | By PrintWeek India

The conference was inaugurated in the presence of Dr Sharad Kale, head of technology and transfer and collaboration division of BARC and  Mrinal Kanti Banerjee, director of innovation and creativity, Essel Propack.

Themes such as waste management, food packaging technology, ecofriendly technology and recent trends in biotechnology and printing and packaging were the highlights of the conference.

The inauguration was preceded by conferences based on the above themes.

The sessions covered topics like antimicrobial packaging by Dr Laxmi Ananthnarayan (associate professor at ICT), recent trends in plastics food packaging by Dr Shashank Mhaske(assistant professor at ICT) and Indian food packaging laws by C S Purushottaman (retired director of SOP).

The session on eco-friendly packaging provided a glimpse of the measures taken by the industry to provide sustainable solutions in packaging. 

Eminent speakers from industry like Rahul Tikoo, regional business manager, South Asia and  Thailand from Akzonobel, Ashwin Patel from BASF and Dr C R Abhyankar from Essel Propack spoke on sustainability, bio films and recyclability in packaging.

The second day of the conference began with a talk by .Sudhir Chavan of  PE International India on Gabis software  followed by a talk on measuring sustainability in packaging by Prof Sagar Shejwalkar. The panel discussion on recent trends in labels and labelling technology kept the audience engaged. The speaker for the panel included Ajay Mehta from SMI Coated Products, Shailesh Nema of UPM Raflatac, Samir Patkar from Gallus India, Gururaj K from EI Dupont and Vivek Kapoor from LMAI.

The conference was concluded with panel discussion on waste management. The audience was proactive and was eager to discuss the developments in smart labels in India as well as the anti-counterfeiting features that can be incorporated in labels. They were also interested in the measures taken by the label industry for the sustainable development and discussed the possibility of promoting recycling through instructions on labels.  

The two day conference was attended by 200 delegates.