Sacmi and Bologna University together, with the aid of Unindustria, to provide answers to their own innovation needs and establish a reference for the entire packaging supply chain. This, in short, is the basis for a convention that has given rise to PackLab, an industrial research facility investigating polymer transformation processes, polymers themselves and assessing packaging to ensure innovation in the plastic processing world.
This project is unique in Italy as it creates a public research facility inside a major manufacturing company such as Sacmi, which aims, especially as regards the Closures&Containers division, to pursue the development of ever-more efficient plastic material processing solutions to produce high-performance packaging. This important university-enterprise integration pilot project will allow the development - also for third parties – of projects, simulations, prototyping and the analysis of innovative polymers: in short, companies will be able to contact the University, which will provide answers via the laboratory where Sacmi personnel will be working alongside the researchers of Bologna University’s Advanced Mechanics Inter-Departmental Industrial Research Centre.
One of the highlights of the project is that Sacmi will be able to make use of the University’s skills and tools, while the laboratory – which will, over the coming months, be provided with all the necessary equipment – can also count on all the cutting-edge tools at the disposal of Sacmi’s R&D lab. The outcome will be a broad, versatile experimental capacity, offering a high-level response to an array of packaging sector and plastic material processing innovation requests.
As a company that has always been attentive to innovation and skills development, Sacmi’s goal is, thanks to the PackLab project, to build ever-closer ties with the University and so ensure the creation of added value. More generally, the new PackLab facility, which will have its own dedicated office, will constitute a natural link between the companies of Emilia-Romagna - especially those of Bologna, hence Unindustria’s support for the whole venture – and the world of research, with a stream of benefits for the entire supply chain. The University has chosen to contribute to the project by setting up an inter-departmental “steering committee” to provide PackLab with interdisciplinary and cross-sector research projects concerning a wide range of production and research fields, from chemistry to packaging, from process simulation to the dynamic analysis of new materials.