It aims to share different points of view, take stock of initiatives already launched and accelerate the emergence of new solutions to respond to decree 3R of the AGEC law (anti-Gaspillage law for a circular economy). It is part of the students' journey, especially those who choose the dominant ecodesign of food packaging in the third year, and values the specificity of their profile: a dual content/container skills.

For Benoît Mefort, Innovation Director at Mecapack, the presence of an OEM in this chair is natural: Machine manufacturers have a central position between packaging material manufacturers, market participants and consumers. They are able to act to accelerate the commercialization of innovations. We are regularly asked by film manufacturers to test new references, for example; it is a base of experience that we can make available to guide the research.”

The research department of the Dijon Agro Institute also has interesting resources in the context of work on the reduction and recyclability of plastic packaging: Plastic cannot disappear overnight; we have already worked a lot on the reduction of thicknesses, now we must move forward on solutions in monomaterial. I think that on this subject, the Institute’s skills in interaction with content will be very useful,” says Benoît Mefort.

Participating in this chair is a logical follow-up for machine builders, who have of course already taken on the subject of sustainable packaging individually as well as in the collectives that bring them together. They played the collaborative innovation game in the first two editions of the Packathon organized by GEPPIA. There is not a single innovation project in which we are launched that does not involve a consortium of skills. It is an opportunity to move the lines collectively. And this means opening up to new partners such as the competitiveness clusters and collaborating with our colleagues,” says Mefort.

In fact, the lines are starting to move in the B2B food industry. Article 28 of the EGAlim law, which came into force on 1 January 2025, led to the development of reusable rigid container sealants and reusable plastic trays, but also machines to automate the filling of stainless steel containers with lids and paper strapping.

To continue this momentum, Benoît Mefort also thinks it is useful to work on neutral and directly comparable life cycle analyses (LCA), in order to “to be able to objectively define which solution is the most virtuous in each context of production/delivery/use/reuse or end-of-life.” An idea that we will not miss in 2025.