Capturing the Prize: the A$200 billion opportunity for Australia's food and agribusiness sector / Enhanced Production and Value Addition / Sustainable Packaging
Extracting more value out of the supply chain by developing sustainable packaging through innovation, redesigns, light-weighting and ensuring packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable.
Believed to be the first of its kind in the ANZ region, Wellman Packaging has created a 100 per cent food-grade recycled polyethene ‘squeezy’ sauce bottle. The ‘torpedo’ design is suitable for tomato sauce, ketchup, and other condiments like barbecue sauce, mustard, and mayonnaise.
While designing the new 100 per cent recycled bottle, Wellman Packaging addressed other bottle performance improvements, features, and processes to deliver multiple technical benefits to the finished packaging design. This counters any suggestion of the inferiority of recycled bottles.
As consumers and retailers increasingly demand recycled plastics, this design will be highly competitive between brands and private labels. The technology has already been applied to the Woolworths 500ml sauce bottle for their Classic Tomato Sauces.
It was recognised with a ‘Gold’ Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design Award (PIDA) from the Australian Institute of Packaging (AIP), and a WorldStar Packaging Award from the World Packaging Organisation (WPO).
It took two years of intensive work by the company, together with its supply partners, to develop the proprietary processes and polymer technologies needed.
It has improved the hot filling performance and bottle stability due to a proprietary-reinforced convex base design. It has a 10 per cent larger brimful volume for easier filling – especially when hot filling – and an 8 per cent possible reduction in bottle weight. It also features a 7 per cent larger label panel area for improved on-shelf presence to better communicate its recyclable qualities to consumers.
For companies who prefer a coloured bottle, the consumption of pigments has been reduced by 50 per cent. Multi-layer extrusion technology has enabled the concentration of pigment in just the outer layer of the extruded bottle. The SqueezePak sauce bottle can also be produced in a translucent format without colourant, to expand the reuse of recovered raw materials.
This new technology is the new benchmark for all sauce and condiment bottles.
This case study is from FIAL's 2022 edition of Celebrating Australian Food and Agribusiness Innovations 2022
