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Send to KindleStand-up pouches push the retail envelope
Although Mini Chips Ahoy! is available only in a stand-up pouch the Nabisco representatives say that many of the company’s products will be sold in both BIB and pouch formats. “We want to use both” says Ann Smith. Dave Smith adds “The decision depends on the type of product how it’s used and for whom it’s intended. We’re not going to abandon our current packaging for stand-up pouches.” They do admit however that Nabisco has invested in stand-up pouching machinery at several of its bakeries.
Frozen food pouch
Another resealable stand-up food pouch in the U.S. market comes from Cudahy WI-based Patrick Cudahy. Under the Heat & Eat brand the company uses a resealable pouch for 14-oz quantities of frozen sausage links patties and meatballs. The precooked and browned product can be heated in a microwave conventional oven or on the stovetop. Aimed at the home-meal replacement market these products are sold nationwide in supermarkets. Suggested retail price is $2.89 for sausage links and patties $3.29 for the meatballs. The company declined to answer any questions about the package citing competitive reasons.
Integral straw
In Ecuador Guayaquil-based Quicornac S.A. is using a stand-up pouch with an integral straw for six flavors of its Kiko®-brand childrens drink. The colorful pouches contain a back-panel graphic of a straw along with a tear notch located at one of the top corners. A three-step illustration instructs the child to grip the package at that corner and tear so that the straw pops out. That allows the child to sip the 200-mL beverage flavors. A front-panel graphic also assists consumers.
Quicornac tells PW the “Doyen”-style pouch is filled with product and a straw on a Bossar B-2000 STU/D-P horizontal form/fill/ seal machine. The company’s Vinces Ecuador plant uses Bossar’s duplex machine that fills at rates of 100/min 50/min from each side of the machine.
Bossar says Quicornac was the first company to commercially use the machine equipped with the drinking straw feeder and tear-notch unit. The machine uses rollstock film from Alusa (Santiago Chile) that includes a 1-mil layer of polyester and 4 mils of PE.
According to Fernanda Villacis Quicornac’s marketing and international sales manager “before this package was introduced similar products were packaged in bottles or brick packs. We started with this pouch for the Kiko brand [in ’98]. It’s unusual because only two other companies had used it. Kids like it because it is easy to carry in a lunch box.”
She says that despite “a lot of economic problems in Ecuador [the product] is [meeting] all our expectations.” Individual pouches sell for the equivalent of U.S. 14¢ in chain and drug stores and supermarkets. “We sell it as a single and in a multipack of eight” she notes. The eight are reportedly shrink-wrapped in film and contained in an outer paperboard sleeve. The product requires no refrigeration. Shelf life is six months.
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