SATISPHACTION is a 4-year project awarded in 2025 with a budget of €3.7 million through the highly competitive EIC Pathfinder Challenge “Nature-inspired alternatives for food packaging and films for agriculture”. It is funded by the European Commission via the European Innovation Council (EIC). The project focuses on developing next-generation, fully biodegradable PHA-based materials for food packaging.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE
Conventional fossil-based plastics have a high carbon footprint, degrade poorly, and cause long-lasting environmental harm. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) offer a renewable and biodegradable alternative, but their high production costs and processing difficulties limit large-scale adoption.
SATISPHACTION addresses these limitations by developing chemical and biological upcycling processes that recover and transform PHA waste into high-quality new materials. The project will also use computer-aided design and AI to create PHAs with enhanced properties, reducing the need for additives during processing. In addition, it will explore the incorporation of thermostable enzymes in the bioplastic formulations to accelerate material self-degradation and prevent microplastic formation in terrestrial and marine systems.
These advances will be validated through the development of three food-packaging prototypes:
- Thermoformed trays
- Flexible heat-sealable sachets
- Biodegradable bio-adhesives
EXPECTED IMPACTS
SATISPHACTION aims to reduce PHA production costs by 50% and promote a circular, local model for food packaging that lowers reliance on non-renewable material sources. The project’s results will help cut carbon emissions, prevent microplastic disruptors—from the food chain. It also aims to strengthen the competitiveness of the European sustainable-materials industry.
WORKING PLAN
WP1 - Design of safe and sustainable materials for food applications
Duration: M1 – M12 (Oct. 2025 – Sept. 2026)
WP Leader: Normec OWS
Supporting the development of safe and sustainable iPHAs from the early stages of research, ensuring that harmful chemicals and materials, which pose risks to health, climate, and the environment, are replaced with safer alternatives. This approach will enable a comparative assessment of new PHAs, based on safety and sustainability performance for food packaging, against petrochemical-based plastics and virgin PHAs, and will guide innovation towards the EU green industrial transition.
WP2 - Atomistic and ML models development
Duration: M1 – M12 (Oct. 2025 – Sept. 2026)
WP Leader: King’s College London
Development of computational tools that generate atomistic models of PHA structures, allowing for rapid design of innovative PHA configurations. A data scraping algorithm to collect existing data on PHAs and organic polymers, will be used to train Machine Learning models for material prediction. Lastly, new interatomic potentials specifically for PHAs will be developed and benchmarked, enabling large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to further enhance the understanding and design of these biopolymers.
WP3 - PHA cell-living upcycling system and biotic production
Duration: M1 - M30 (Oct. 2025 – Mar. 2028)
WP Leader: Margarita Salas Centre for Biological Research CIB-CSIC
Creation of sustainable solutions for PHA recycling and smart biodegradable materials. WP 3 will seek the transformation of PHA waste into valuable compounds using engineered microbes. Besides, it will target the design of advanced enzymes that enable controlled biodegradation, paving the way for smarter, environmentally friendly PHA materials. Finally, the WP seeks to develop an efficient system for producing new PHA from recycled materials, optimising both the quality and sustainability of the resulting bioplastics.
WP4 - PHA chemical recycling
Duration: M1 – M12 (Oct. 2025 – Sept. 2026)
WP Leader: AINIA
Development of an efficient, sustainable, and scalable chemical process for breaking down PHA into its valuable monomer components. The development of a selective and sustainable depolymerisation method, that maximises the recovery of high-purity monomers with minimal waste will be targeted. Following, this WP will focus on the purification and characterisation of these monomers to ensure their quality for further applications. Finally, the whole process will be validated at a lab scale, to demonstrate its potential for future industrial applications, especially in sustainable packaging solutions.
WP5 – Chemical synthesis of innovative PHA-based polymers
Duration: M13 – M30 (Oct. 2026 – Mar. 2028)
WP Leader: Polykey
Development and optimisation of innovative iPHAs using both experimental and computational methods. First, a chemical polymerisation strategy will be developed, optimising the reaction conditions to create iPHAs with specific lengths and crystallinity. Next, a new library of iPHAs will be prepared, fine-tuning their composition to achieve targeted thermal and mechanical properties, and selecting the best candidates for further development. Multiscale simulations will be run to predict polymer properties, generating datasets to refine the design. Finally, ML models will be implemented to accelerate property prediction, continuously improving the platform with data from experiments and simulations.
WP6 - Formulation and compounding of smart materials
Duration: M25 – M42 (Oct. 2027 – Mar. 2029)
WP Leader: Natureplast
Development, formulation, and characterisation of PHA-based materials for packaging applications. First, an analysis of the regulatory framework will be performed to ensure compliance with the food industry requirements. In parallel, PHA blends and bio-adhesive formulas will be developed, tailoring them for improved processability, biodegradability, and suitability for food-safe applications. Additionally, masterbatches containing enzymes will be formulated to enhance biodegradability.
WP7 - Processing into packaging and product validation
Duration: M31 – M48 (Apr. 2028 – Sept. 2029)
WP Leader: AINIA
Demonstrate the production and assembly of PHA-based packaging prototypes. The previous PHA formulations will be processed into flexible thermosealable sachets and thermoformed packaging components ensuring they meet the required performance standards. Additionally, an iPHA-based bio-adhesive will be produced and tested for its application on cellulosebased materials and fruit peels. Finally, the packaging components will be integrated and validated, and the prototypes tested for product containment, barrier properties, and structural integrity.
WP8 - Sustainability assessment
Duration: M13 – M48 (Oct. 2026 – Sept. 2029)
WP Leader: Normec OWS
Assessment of the sustainability of the newly developed packaging produced from iPHA in comparison with fossil-based plastics and virgin PHA-based packaging. Cradle-to-gate and cradle-to-grave assessments will be performed to evaluate the environmental, economic and social impacts, as well as biodegradability.
WP9, WP10, WP11 - Communication, dissemination & exploitation
Duration: M1 – M48 (Oct. 2025 – Sept. 2029)
WP Leader: Packaging Cluster
These WPs will seek the communication of the project to the general public. The consortium aims to explain the relevance of the problem and how the project can deliver a solution, by exposing the project's objectives and approach. The second goal is the dissemination of the project outcomes towards stakeholders, i.e. the scientific community, the plastic industry actors and public authorities. Finally, the last goal is to prepare the exploitation of the project results.
WP12, WP13, WP14 – Project Management
Duration: M1 - M48 (Oct. 2025 – Sept. 2029)
WP Leader: AINIA
These WPs will ensure the smooth and timely running of the project, including deliverables completion and submission, budget allocation, risk management, milestones achievement, and communication with EIC. This involves administrative, technical, quality, open science and data management.
WP15, WP16, WP17 – Portfolio Management
Duration: M1 – M48 (Oct. 2025 – Sept. 2029)
WP Leader: AINIA
This Pathfinder Challenge aims to support ambitious interdisciplinary research that will lead to the development and production of sustainable nature inspired alternatives for food packaging and agricultural production such as, but not limited to, greenhouse and mulch films. These materials must have a reduced environmental impact, through design and production, while delivering the functional characteristics of plastics.
Proposals should look to bring forward ideas that span the product lifecycle from the development of novel sustainable materials, their design and production through to end of life, while maximising the time and extent of use. Abundant, naturally occurring materials that display properties to be optimized for food related applications with a reduced environmental footprint in production and enhanced scope for re-use recycling and biodegradability, including in extreme environments, will be encouraged.
PROJECT CAPABILITIES
The project will develop and integrate the following capabilities:
- Chemical and enzymatic upcycling of biopolymers
- Biopolymer recycling using living cell systems
- Strain engineering for microbial fermentation and downstream processing
- AI-assisted polymer discovery Organocatalysed polymerisation of PHAs
- Compounding with thermostable enzymes for accelerated biodegradation
- Formulation of bioadhesives and bioplastics
- Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) approaches for food-packaging applications
- Biodegradation & ecotoxicity analysis in marine, freshwater and soil simulated conditions
- Environmental, social, and life-cycle cost assessments (eLCA, sLCA, LCC)
- Compliance with food-contact regulatory frameworks
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
