Oxford team to investigate food packaging

Miss Mar Puentes working in the Oxford Toppan Centre

The Department of Materials has signed a research agreement worth more than a million pounds with a major Japanese technology company. The Toppan Printing Company, with interests in high security printing, food packaging, and electronic distribution of information, has agreed to fund a programme of research of up to four years in Oxford. The research projects focus on the development of highly sophisticated food packaging technology, which Toppan will exploit for one of its core business interests. Dr Yusuke Tsukahara, of Toppan, said: `The Department of Materials at Oxford University was the obvious choice for our venture, because of its world-class reputation and the quality of its individual researchers. We look forward to a very fruitful collaboration between industry and academia.' The Department has just received a top five-star `internationally excellent' rating in the national Research Assessment Exercise carried out by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It was also given a first-class report in a recent teaching quality assessment carried out by the same body, scoring 23 points out of a possible 24. Funding from the agreement will bring many benefits for scientists working in the Department, including the opportunity to undertake new world class materials research with direct industrial applications. The agreement is likely to support a five-strong research team at Oxford which will investigate plastic layering of the kind used to prevent food from deteriorating when stored. The team will set about modelling how the relevant molecules move through certain thin layers. Dr Andrew Briggs, of the Department of Materials, said: `This collaboration has huge significance for the Materials Department. It offers us the chance to work closely with Japanese scientists of very high ability at Toppan and channel the results of our research directly into the packaging industry.' Dr Briggs believes this agreement is part of a new and growing trend by leading Japanese industries to draw on the research capabilities of world-class universities outside Japan. This view was reinforced at recent symposia: organised in Oxford with the Japan Export Trade Organisation, which was attended by senior managers and scientists representing almost 50 major Japanese companies based in the UK, and in Birmingham by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.