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Send to KindleAgricultural winners at FPA
A 25-kg bag is also available in the original two-ply paper bag.
Single-dose for the garden
Another agricultural product whose package won an FPA award is GardenTech(TM) Singles(TM) from Gulfstream Home and Garden of Lexington KY. These single-dose pouches of garden products were honored (see Packaging World Nov. '97 p. 59) as winners in the 1997 AmeriStar Package Awards sponsored by the Institute of Packaging Professionals.
The 3" x 5" pouches are used for four varieties of concentrated lawn and garden chemicals including Diazinon(TM) and Sevin® Insecticide Singles for control of yard bugs Herbicide Singles for weeds and Fungicide Singles for plant disease. Each pouch holds roughly 1.5 oz of concentrate that's to be mixed with water at time of use to yield 1 gal of product. Designed as an alternative to standard rigid packaging it's believed that this represents the first use of single-dose pouches for mainstream chemicals.
Because the products pose a threat if ingested developing a puncture-resistant child-resistant package was essential. Another consideration was machineability as the pouch structure is designed to run on a horizontal form/fill/seal machine.
The pouch structure consists of a six-color reverse-printed 48-ga Mylar® from DuPont (Wilmington DE) 3-mil Valeron® film from Valéron Strength Films (Houston TX) laminated to a 3-mil high-density polyethylene layer with 1.5-mil of DuPont Surlyn® as an inner heat sealant.
Converter Star Packaging (College Park GA) says the empty pouch weighs 0.2 oz. That compares favorably to 6.1 oz for a standard HDPE 1-gal container a 97% source reduction says Star. Materials cost savings over conventional rigid containers is said to be 87%.
Machinery can fill at speeds of 60/min. A rigid container by comparison is typically filled 11 units/min. BPS Inc. (Helena AR) handles contract packaging. To accommodate a booklet label BPS employed a custom-built labeler from CCL Labeling Equipment (Monrovia CA) that applies the labels at the time of the hf/f/s operation. The labels are supplied by CCL Label (Itasca IL).
Pouches are sent in bulk to Samples Partnership (Berlin NJ) for placement into a 20-pt SBS folding carton. Cartons are packed into 200#-test E-flute corrugated shippers supplied by Rock-Tenn (Norcross GA). The printed shippers double as a point-of-purchase display.
GardenTech Singles are available in Kmart Lowe's True Value Hardware and in Home Depot stores in the Southeast. Suggested retail price ranges from $2.49 to $2.99 per pack.
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