The closing seminar of the Finnish food sector’s internationalization program arranged by the Food development cluster program was held on 10th of November in Helsinki. The seminar entitled “Vie älä vikise – eväitä kansainvälistymiseen” included several presentations related to important issues regarding the export of Finnish food products to European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Russia.

The 14th Nordic Workshop on Sensory Evaluation organised on 5th-6th October 2011 in Snekkersten, Denmark was held with a topic ‘Sensory Professionalism’. European Sensory Network (ESN) meeting was held on 12th -14th October 2011 in Rome, Italy. The keynote presentations of the ‘Futuristic Approaches Observation and 3D’ workshop covered presentations on Observational techniques applied to the study on children’s eating behaviour and Virtual and augmented reality for user centred innovation.

Green economy, also referred as biobased economy, utilizes biomass derived raw materials for high-volume applications, such as packaging. Barrier properties are extremely important for biobased food packaging materials as both gas and water vapor transmission through packaging reduce the quality of food resulting shorter shelf-lives, increased costs and eventually more waste.

Packaging and food industries’ interests are to find new products and packages to create added value for their businesses. Consumers’ interests are to get products and packages, which better fill their needs. FUTUPACK-CON project aimed to create ideas, develop, make and test new concepts for future food packages.