Absorbent pads for meat packaging are crucial for extended meat preservation and to keep meat appealing to the customers. Cellulose based packaging has been replacing more and more plastic packaging due to cellulose's sustainable sourcing, biodegradability, high recycling rates and absence of microplastics formation. Here an absorbent pad was fully made of mechanical pulps and wood derivatives. The film that maintains the core together was made of fibrillated thermomechanical pulp (TMP). The pulp was pre-treated with xylanase enzymes before refining to improve fiber fibrillation. The fibrillated enzymatic pretreated pulp (Enz-TMP) demonstrated good film-forming capabilities, and films with 25 and 50 g/m2 could be manufactured with mechanical strength of 43 and 55 MPa, respectively. Their wet resistance to tension was comparable to a commercial paper reference. The films were modified with a lignin-based treatment to provide water barrier properties to the surface in contact with meat to avoid meat drying. Cobb60 values of 2.7 g/m2 and 3.5 g/m2 were obtained after lignin addition. The core of the pad was composed of fluff chemi-thermomechanical pulp (CTMP) to provide good absorption capacity. Finally, fully functional pads were manufactured and composed of: i) CTMP in the core, ii) fibrillated Enz-TMP as the basis for films that were surface modified and perforated on the top and iii) an adhesive of fibrillated Enz-TMP/lignin mixture. The absorption performance of the pads (core dimension 155 × 60 mm) was 23.8 mL/Pad, as assessed with the industrially established BfR (German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment)-method.
