Packaging in the Wine Industry: Performance, Safety and Sustainability

This class aims to provide students with fundamental concepts related to the most common packaging materials used in the food sector, with special emphasis on the wine industry. In addition, students will gather the technical skills necessary to design properly the final packaging system according with the sought performance, with particular attention toward recent hot topics such as sustainability, consumer's safety, and "active" and "intelligent" features.

At the end of the class, students will be asked to be acquainted with most important and representative packaging materials. They should demonstrate the ability to distinguish different materials based on the most relevant functional properties. Moreover, students should exhibit full competence about fundamental concepts linked to phenomena such as permeation, migration, compostability, biodegradability, etc. Students will be encouraged to develop an adequate criticism enabling them to perform a careful assessment of the environmental, economic, and social impact of any packaging system they will deal with, based on the topics covered within the course.