Read More on:
Send to KindleOnions take to thermoforms
Foodservice customers who order trays instead of a bag with a zipper reclosure pay a slight premium says sales manager Melia Alamo. “But they’re willing to because the product is so much easier to access and handle” says Alamo. “We still offer the bag but we’re seeing more and more converts to the tray.”
Shelf life on tray-packed sliced onions is 16 days same as for bagged product. The product is shipped from the Oxnard plant to warehouses in Oxnard Salinas or Los Angeles where it’s sold. “It becomes the buyer’s responsibility to get it through the chilled distribution chain” says Alamo.
And on the retail side
Gills Onions’ entry into the retail market is more recent than the launch of its foodservice line. In April of 2002 it began selling 10-oz zippered bags of sliced or diced onions (see packworld.com/go/c135). But in March of this year in response to retailers who thought it would display better a thermoformed PET cup with heat-sealed film lidding and a snap-fit overcap was being released as an alternative. A second Orics S-30 sealing machine was installed to handle the retail line. It includes a station near the discharge area where snap-fit lids are automatically applied.
Thermoformed PET cups are 4.5” square and 3” deep. They’re supplied by Cool-Pak. The lidding material a 1-mil DuPont Mylar with a heat-seal coating is from Packaging Products. A pressure-sensitive bar-code label is applied to the bottom of each cup by Packaging Products. The firm also applies a brightly decorated p-s label to the side of each container. This label is printed flexo in four colors and is supplied by Label Technology.
For diced onions the cups are filled automatically by a 14-bucket combination scale from Heat and Control. The Orics S-30 cup sealer sits beneath it. For sliced onions cups are filled by hand and then sent through the Orics machine.
The cups run through the S-30 system two-across at 60 cups/min. Sliced onions are filled 8 oz per cup while diced onions—including a diced onion/celery mix—are filled 10 oz per cup. Cups are manually packed six per corrugated tray. Refrigerated shelf life is the same for the retail cups as for the foodservice trays: 16 days. The cups sell for about $1.99.
“We think consumers will like the cup better and we already know that retailers prefer it because it displays and merchandises better than the pouch” says Gill. “We’ll pay a little more for packaging materials but if we sell more product it will be worth it.”
Comments(0)
Add new comment