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Delivering for dairy (sidebar)

Custom bottle helps launch Oberweis Dairy into single-serve milks

Pw 16845 Loony Tunes

By calling 1-888-MILK-TO-U, Oberweis Dairy consumers can order milk in ½-gal glass bottles for home delivery. While Oberweis cherishes that tradition, its new line of 12-oz single-serve fresh milks filled on a new packaging line is anything but old fashioned.

In August, the North Aurora, IL-based dairy introduced single-serve milks (and half-and-half and lemonade) in 12-oz polyethylene terephthalate bottles. The bottles provide the portability, reclosability, and graphic appeal to compete better at retail with other beverages.

“We’ve had a lot of people asking for our products in a single-serve container,” notes Mark Leonardelli, vice president of sales and marketing for Oberweis. “But our milks have been in glass for many years, primarily because our customers believe that taste is better preserved in glass. We considered glass for single-serve milks, but decided against it because of factors related to convenience, handling, and all of the issues that give plastic an advantage.

“We sell super-premium-quality milk, so we could not compromise taste in our packaging decision,” he continues. Oberweis conducted limited taste testing of its own milk brands with consumers. When consumers knew what materials were used for the test, they chose glass containers first. However, PET fared well enough that the dairy selected it for its single-serve milk launch.

‘Looney’ launch

Oberweis found an appropriate supplier in QDC Plastic Container (Lansing, MI). “They’re well-known in the dairy industry,” says Leonardelli. QDC injection/stretch blow-molds the 38-mm, 22-g bottles from preforms manufactured by an unidentified company.

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