Cinfa selects an eco-packaging project as the winner of the open innovation challenge launched in the Más Empresa ecosystem
Cinfa chose the Alicante start-up FYCH Technologies’ project as the winner of the eco-packaging challenge launched through the ecosystem’s open innovation platform Más Empresa, from Ibercaja. The award was presented at a conference organised by Ibercaja Empresas to promote organisational transformation and open innovation in Zaragoza.
With the help of FYCH Technologies, we will now work on launching a pilot project to drive greater sustainability in pharmaceutical packaging.
What did the eco-packaging challenge involve?
A few months ago, Cinfa proposed a challenge to improve the sustainability of medicine packaging, in collaboration with Ibercaja’s Más Empresa ecosystem. Making advances in this area is one of our priorities, but it requires special care, as the pharmaceutical sector has very strict quality and safety standards. For this reason, packaging solutions have to meet a wide range of requirements to ensure that they meet the correct conditions for preserving pharmaceuticals.
The start-up FYCH Technologies provided a patented solution based on recycling blister packs and pouches using delamination technology, a mechanical recycling of multilayer packaging. This process dissolves the adhesive that glues the individual layers together, separating the materials so that they can be recycled as pure materials. This proposal attracted our interest here at Cinfa and, in collaboration with the start-up, we are now considering launching a pilot project in this area.
Also, as part of the challenge, Cinfa awarded a prize of 6,000 euros to this company, which Oksana Horodytska and Andrea Cabanes, heads of the start-up, collected during the event organised by Ibercaja Empresas. This recognition demonstrates that its value proposition and technology can be applied to all markets, including the pharmaceutical market. But this is only the beginning of a possible partnership between the two companies; we will work on outlining a collaborative project that will allow us to use this technology in our medicine packaging.
Organisational transformation and open innovation conference
The award was presented during a conference organised by Ibercaja’s Más Empresa ecosystem to promote organisational transformation and open innovation. As explained by Toño Ruiz, head of Commercial Strategy at Ibercaja Empresas, “open innovation is already part of the DNA of medium and large-sized businesses, driving their transformation processes and helping them identify external talent.” Thanks to this open innovation challenge platform, Ibercaja Empresas helps different organisations identify start-ups and scaleups that can respond to their needs.
Julio Sánchez Mariñas, head of Innovation at Cinfa, attended the conference, where he stressed that “establishing synergies between organisations is beneficial for large companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs. But the most important thing is that, thanks to these synergies, projects are launched quickly and swiftly, which ultimately benefits society as a whole.”
“Our collaboration with Ibercaja’s Más Empresa ecosystem, and the recognition that both of us have given to FYCH Technologies, helps us with our goal of achieving a more sustainable world and with fulfilling one of the objectives of our CinfaNext innovation platform, which is striking the balance between caring for the environment and social well-being while supporting economic development,” he explained.
During the event, we also presented CinfaNext as a successful case of open innovation in the health and pharmaceutical sector, and gave a talk called “Transformation models in organisations: is open innovation a lever for accelerating organisational growth?”, in which Elena Rodríguez, director of Opinno Madrid, analysed the transformation models in organisations and presented other cases of open innovation.
Details of Ibercaja’s Más Empresa ecosystem
Established in 2018 by Ibercaja, it aims to guide and advise companies, free of charge, through the different contexts they face as they develop. Más Empresa currently has 5,000 users belonging to more than 1,800 companies, and it is supported by 49 national and international partner companies, including Cinfa.
Since it was founded, it has organised more than 200 face-to-face and online activities that have been very well received by its target audience, generating expert content for its website and YouTube channel.
