Bioactive Packaging for Modern Beverage Industry

Abstract At the moment, beverage and food packaging is an important element in contemporary trade of any goods, which guarantees preserving the quality of the goods and ensures a longer shelf life. Main role of the package is in protecting the product from external conditions and negative factors, such as chemical, biological, and physical contaminants. Other functions include insuring the intact quality, health, storage, and dispensing of the products in an easier way. Traditional packaging only protect food products from the degradation process that is performed by environmental factors such as oxygen, light, moisture, etc., it contains the food, and provides ingredients and nutritional information to the customers. Active packaging refers to the solution in which the packaging, the product, and the environment interact. The chemical, physical, and biological activities result in a change of the conditions of the packed good, causing a more sustainable shelf life and it guarantees or improves significantly the biological safety and sensory properties, all these while maintaining the product quality. Intelligent packaging uses materials that are able to monitor the changes occurred in the packaged food. The systems used in intelligent packaging have the capacity to distinguish, recognize, and document the environmental changes happening in the packed food. There are three different types of intelligent packaging systems, viz., sensors, indicators, and radio-frequency identification systems.