Noel has taken part in OXICOOK, an innovative pilot project to reduce food waste. Waste does not always begin when a product reaches its use-by date: it often starts much earlier, on retail shelves, when food that is perfectly fit for consumption is withdrawn because it does not look the way shoppers expect. In sliced, packaged cooked meat products, colour is a decisive factor: a slight discolouration can be enough for a consumer to reject the product, generating economic, food-related and environmental losses.
OXICOOK, now completed, worked to understand and minimise the causes of colour loss in these products during distribution and retail display. We took part as a cooked meat producer, contributing our experience to address a challenge shared across the whole sector. You can find all the details and results of the project on the Packaging Cluster website.
The project showed that discolouration is not down to a single cause, but to a combination of factors interacting across the entire value chain. Building on this diagnosis, combined strategies were developed based on the use of high-barrier packaging, control of oxygen availability, optimised lighting at points of sale and management of the product’s display time.
One of OXICOOK’s greatest strengths has been its collaborative nature. The project was driven by a multi-sector consortium bringing together cooked meat producers, manufacturers of packaging materials and machinery, distribution companies, research centres and sector bodies. The Operational Group behind it was led by CARINSA and coordinated by the Packaging Cluster and, alongside Noel, involved the companies La Selva, Monells, Enplater, TPL, Kao Chimigraf, ULMA, Bonpreu Esclat and Ametller Origen, as well as IRTA as a research centre and the collaboration of MULTIVAC, FECIC and Hispack.
With this initiative we reaffirm our commitment to a more efficient, sustainable and responsible food model, in which technological innovation and industrial collaboration make it possible to reduce avoidable losses and improve the use of resources. This innovative pilot project is co-financed by the European Union, as an operational group of the European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI), within the framework of the CAP Strategic Plan 2023-2027, with grants promoted by the Departament d’Agricultura, Ramaderia i Pesca of the Generalitat de Catalunya.