Nestlé and IBM partner to identify novel packaging materials

Nestlé R&D is partnering with IBM Research to develop new tools that use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep tech to bring innovations to life. This research collaboration has led to the development of a generative AI tool that can identify novel high-barrier packaging materials.

With its food packaging, Nestlé is continuously reducing the use of virgin plastic, developing alternative materials and novel technologies, and moving to recyclable mono-material and paper-based solutions. Identifying new packaging materials that meet each product’s functional needs while ensuring food safety and quality is often a time-consuming process.

Now, Nestlé and IBM scientists have used AI-based processing techniques to construct a knowledge base of known materials from public and proprietary documents. Subsequently, the team fine-tuned a fit-for-purpose chemical language model on this curated corpus, enabling it to learn the representation of the molecular structures. Using that knowledge, the teams used the recently developed regression transformer by IBM Research to learn the correlation between key structural molecular features and the resulting physical-chemical properties. The resulting model can now propose entirely new high-barrier packaging materials that shield sensitive products from moisture, temperature swings and oxygen.

Nestlé will use this novel technology to identify future packaging materials, while considering cost, recyclability and functionality.

“In the future, such breakthrough technology could be used to optimise the development of more sustainable packaging solutions across product categories,” Stefan Palzer, Nestlé Chief Technology Officer, said.

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