Sustainable Food Contact Materials

Andrey Charkovskiy is a Chemist and a Business Partner for global technology projects related to recycling and polymers at Siegwerk in Germany. His key initiative is to drive cross-value chain projects with the target of establishing a packaging circular economy and ensuring that Siegwerk is at the forefront of its development and the business is positioned accordingly. Prior to his actual role, he was working in application development at ExxonMobil Chemical, supporting customers in various film extrusion segments.

Martin Engelmann is a Lawyer and has been the Director General of the German Plastic Packaging Association since 2019. Before that, he has been the Director General of the German Paints and Printing Inks Industry Association and had leadership roles at PlasticsEurope and the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI).

Robert Geser is a Chemical Engineer with a focus on food and started the business in the paper industry for packaging’s in direct contact with food. After around 20 years in this business, he changed in the plastic packaging business of ALPLA in 2009 - ALPLA produce packaging systems, bottles, caps and injection-moulded parts for a wide range of industries. He is now responsible as the Head of the Group Regulatory Affairs at ALPLA. With this group they support their location all over the world with the requirements for articles coming in direct contact with food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical applications. Robert Geser is the Vice-Chair of the Main Committee at the IK Industry Association Plastics Packaging on the Consumer Goods Law and active on the Food Contact Regulatory Experts Panel (FREP).

Dagmar Glatz has an engineering degree in plastics engineering and has been a Sustainable Packaging Expert in the Product Management Sustainability at dm-drogerie markt in Germany since 2019. She is responsible for the strategical execution of dm packaging targets for 2025 and covers a broad range of different packaging materials and production processes that spans from paper and metal to plastics. Her competence fields and knowledge base are centered around material & production expertise, sustainable packaging design and strategy development, next to regulatory and legislative topics that are currently worked out on different levels in order to leverage circularity in packaging as well as extended producer responsibility. She is looking back on more than 15 years of experience in plastic processing and plastic related product development and actively engaging in multiple initiatives and programmes that are centered around sustainable packaging.

Thomas Gude has been the Deputy Head of SQTS, Switzerland, for over 18 years. He is heading the laboratories dealing with food and non-food analysis as well as with risk assessments.

Christian Kirchnawy studied food and biotechnology in Vienna. Since his diploma thesis in 2010 he is working on the application of in-vitro bioassays for the safety assessment of food packaging. For his PhD thesis in technical chemistry he developed test methods for the detection of endocrine active substances. Since 2011 he is leading the Microbiology & Cell Culture department at OFI. The main focus of his work, is on the safety assessment of food contact materials and medical devices.

Thomas Simat has been a Professor and the Chair of Food Science and FCM at the Technische Universität Dresden with research on FCM since 2003. He is the Chairman of the ‘German BfR Committee on Consumer Products’’.

Ulphard Thoden van Velzen is a Chemist and a Senior Scientist Packaging Technology and Recycling at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research. Up to about 2008 the focus of the research was to extend the shelf life of perishable foods with advanced packaging solutions and hence avoid food loss. From 2008 on the focus shifted towards the understanding packaging waste and mechanical recycling. The main challenge is to relate the design-aspects of packages to the quality of recycled plastics. He has an extended network of clients from packaging industries, waste management companies, recycling facilities, EPR organisation (Afvalfonds), Ministries, material organisations and sectorial stakeholders.