Agricultural waste fibre technology company Papyrus Australia has lodged an Australian patent application for its innovative banana fibre production process which produces a cost-efficient environmentally friendly fibre ideal for use in moulded food packaging products.
Papyrus’ Managing Director Ramy Abraham Azer said the patent application was an important first step towards acquiring international patent protection for the company’s zero waste process, which was recently proven in a series of trials in which Papyrus successfully produced commercial quantities of high-quality biodegradable moulded food packaging using off-the-shelf moulding machines.
He said the new patent complements the company’s two existing patents covering the processes of treating waste banana tree trunks and creating homogenous banana fibre chips from veneered banana fibre with zero waste.
“This new patent represents a fundamentally important step, both in the process of refining raw banana fibre to enable it to be used in the production of food-quality, moulded packaging products, but also in our journey towards our end goal of replacing plastic packaging for a more sustainable future,” Mr Azer concluded.
