Dry soup maker stands up the envelope

Its new Casbah® line of Teapot Soups(TM) are packed in lightweight pouches that stand on a shelf. They retail for 79¢.

"Since we wanted to position this line against soups packaged in paper cups, we wanted it to stand up like cups," says Dimitri Cados, president of Sahara. "And we wanted a principal display panel at least as large as a cup." The answer is a gusseted pouch of paper/polyethylene, litho printed in five colors by Lithotype Co. (South San Francisco, CA).

Along with delivering a stand-up package with a good display panel, it may be the smallest pouch ever to get a gusset. Rollstock is formed and filled on a horizontal packager from Klockner Bartelt (Sarasota FL) that's fitted with what Cados calls a proprietary filler. It permits up to six ingredients to be filled separately, Cados says.

The pouch is made of 55# paper/15# low-density polyethylene, and Cados claims it offers six months' shelf life. It also allows the front panel to point out that the pouch requires 84% less packaging than dry soup in a cup. And Cados should know, Sahara also makes other products in paper cups. "If this Teapot Soups package becomes successful, we'd like to phase out the cups," he says.