The FABES Forschungs-GmbH for Analytic and Evaluation of Diffusion Processes.

The company which was established in 1997 is mainly engaged in applied research within the field “ quality assurance of consumer articles” and in specific consultation of the involved industry. Founder and head of FABES is Dr. Otto Piringer with more than 20 years experience in the area “mass transfer phenomena” gained as head of the department “product safety and analytics” in the Fraunhofer Institute IVV. He is member of the “Kommission für Bedarfsgegenstände” of the German “Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung (BfR)” (in former times BgVV) in Berlin.

The core competence of FABES is the measurement and the theoretical estimation of migration processes from food contact materials into contacting media.

Main activities of FABES are:

• Development of specific analytical methods and measurement of migration kinetics of additives, their decomposition products and impurities in the plastic materials as well,
• Identification of unknown packaging components (off-odours, recycling components),
• Evaluation of food contact materials with regard to national and international food safety regulation (BRD, EU, FDA),
• Development of diffusion models for the theoretical estimation of migration.
• Compilation of evaluations for monomers and (monomeric/polymeric) additives for BfR, EFSA and FDA, used in the production of food contact materials.
• Cooperation with several institutions, associations and industry within EU and other projects

For the practical realization of the research program modern analytical instruments are available: gaschromatographs (GC), high-performance-liquid-chromatographs (HPLC), mass-spektrometers (MS) and the different coupling possibilities GC/MS, HPLC/MS and MS/MS.