This timely update of the best-selling CD-Art looks at digital developments in the music industry. It includes new work produced for the growing download and interactive market: albums packaged ...
The Chilean Carica, also known as Chilean Papaya, is a rare fruit used as a versatile gourmet product. The Tamaya Gourmet company in Santiago, Chile, wanted to forego glass jars for a more sustainable packaging solution that could also take the rigors of the long journey from a Chilean port to the U.S.
Tamaya Gourmet partnered with Ampac Flexible Packaging in Cincinnati, OH, to provide a jar alternative that could achieve a number of packaging goals. Tamaya Gourmet required: 1) an easy-open feature to ensure customers did not have difficulty opening the pouch; 2) recloseability to allow storage of unused product; 3) good film clarity to highlight the appearance and color of the fruit; and 4) high-quality, modern graphics to convey the premium quality of the product.
Ampac Flexibles provided a recloseable standup retort pouch with rotogravure-printed graphics and incorporated Ampac Flexibles’ Linear Tear technology for straight and easy tearing of the pouch. The new pouches achieved all of Tamaya’s requirements and provided significant savings in shipping and storage weight while also minimizing product breakage.
The glass in the former jar format accounted for one third of the packaged product’s weight. The new retort pouch packaging is less than 3% of the weight of the final packaged product, providing a tremendous improvement in the product-to-package ratio and reducing the cost of shipping.
Retort fruit pouches are a more practical alternative to glass jars because they offer a more sustainable package and a higher packaging efficiency—delivering less excess packaging to the consumer regardless of material recyclability. In this case, the limits of pouch technology were stretched because of the density of the product and the desire to package 35 oz. of product.
“This project presented several challenges,” says Tobin Haas, director of technical marketing at Ampac Flexibles. “Tamaya wanted a very rigid pouch that would sit in a specific manner yet be clear and easy to open. We also needed a retort zipper with low consumer side opening force but at the same time has a very high product side opening force to withstand the weight of the product during distribution."
The final package design features a transparent hybrid polyester film with a high oxygen barrier that debuted with this package. During shipping and handling, this FDA-approved material has less “flex-cracking” than the often-used aluminum oxide barrier. "In the end, the new pouch hit all the targets stiffness, easy opening, reclosable, good clarity," Haas explains. "And the new pouch utilizes much less material and reduces energy and cost in shipping."
Pouches reduce overall energy consumption, lessen raw material waste, provide cost effective distribution and decrease environmental pollution. Due to their innovative design and structure, retort fruit pouches improve product-to-package efficiency by more than 90%. Retort fruit pouches also offer added safety to the consumer because they will not shatter or crack if accidentally dropped. In addition, flexible pouches require fewer pallets and trucks for distribution and storage. This saves energy, lowers cost associated with transportation and warehousing, and minimizes pollution emissions.
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Quantifiable Savings:
• Only eight empty fruit jars (16 oz.) could be stored or shipped in the same amount of space as 143 empty retort fruit pouches (35 oz.)—a 96% reduction in storage and shipping volume.
• A retort fruit pouch (35 oz.) holds over twice the amount of product with 91% less material weight as compared to a glass jar (16 oz.).
• The packaging efficiency, or product-to-package ratio, of the retort fruit pouch (35 oz.) is over 14 times higher than the packaging efficiency of the glass jar.
• 918 filled pouches (35 oz.) can be transported on a standard 1.2 x 1.1 meter pallet versus 330 filled glass jars (16 oz.), resulting in over five times the volume of product delivered on one pallet.
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