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Easy-opening pouch, tough-to-open box

Paradise Tomato Kitchens, an innovator in fresh tomato products about 10 years ago, adds case security and easy-open pouches.

Paradise Tomato Kitchens has added an easy-opening tear notch (top) to its foodservice pouches.
Paradise Tomato Kitchens has added an easy-opening tear notch (top) to its foodservice pouches.

Paradise Tomato Kitchens of Louisville, KY, began last fall to offer two new packaging improvements that company president Ron Peters claims are innovations in the tomato sauce segment of the foodservice market. The first is a tamper-evident shipping case that required the help of his corrugated supplier. The second is an easy-open tear notch that’s incorporated into the seal area during filling and sealing.

Since its founding, PTK shipped pouches of its tomato products in rugged bliss-style shipping cases that provided excellent protection to the vulnerable flexible pouches inside, usually in a six count. In itself, those cases were an improvement at the time, at least from the product protection aspect.

However, after 9/11, Peters and PTK began to examine how well the boxes secured the pouches inside from acts of contamination or even terrorism. “Generally, bliss-style-box top flaps simply meet in the middle of the top of the box,” Peters says. “So, it’s possible for someone to lift one top flap and slide something into the package. Or even more insidious, someone could possibly even inject something into one or more of the pouches inside. Worse, the end user, our customer, wouldn’t necessarily be aware that the product had been contaminated or adulterated.”

So PTK went to its corrugated supplier, Inland Paperboard & Packaging (Indianapolis, IN), and to the maker of its box erector, Moen Industries (Santa Fe Springs, CA), for help in developing a tamper-evident shipping container.

An asymmetrical design

Most corrugated box designs are symmetrical. Among other advantages, that makes them more efficient in their use of corrugated. But PTK wanted the top flaps to overlap so they could be sealed with hot melt adhesive. “Essentially our box design has one top flap that is an inch wider than the other so it creates the overlap,” Peters says. “We worked with Inland and Moen to make the new case blank and to modify the erector so it could make the modified case.”

Inland refers to the new box as a “bliss-wrap safety seal,” according to Jeff Workinger, PTK account manager for Inland in Louisville. The blank is made from 44-ECT C-flute corrugated, usually printed flexo in a single color, though print specs can vary by the needs of PTK’s customers.

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