This and other AIMCAL awards were presented at the group’s annual meeting March 11, in Indian Wells, CA.
"We went to Celplast, an existing supplier of ours, and asked them to develop this bag with us," says Connie Morrison, vice president of marketing for Canada Bread Co., Ltd., Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada. The result, the Cellofoil™ package, has set the sliced bread market on its ear in Canada.
Despite premium pricing, the new packaged bread has racked up impressive sales gains. As Morrison explains, the new bag works in concert with a product reformulation. "We call it a product enhancement, supported by improved packaging." In Western Canada, the new package replaced a traditional see-through bread bag. Sales increased 85%, compared to the former bag. In Ontario, Canada Bread marketed the new package alongside the former bag and the combined sales were up 61%.
The product/package combo has a longer shelf life than a conventional plastic bag. But Morrison declines to reveal the improvement, except to characterize it as "significant." It’s so noticeable that the printed bag features an icon that’s repeated in promotion, "Stays fresh to the last slice."
In creating the bag, Celplast metallizes a 1.15-mil LDPE from Leco Industries. After metallizing, the material is transferred to Allied Halo Industries where it’s surface-printed flexo in five colors plus overlacquer, then fabricated into bags. Graphics were created by Corporate Visuals.
The thin film is a real challenge to control in metallizing, says Jim Lush, account manager at Celplast. Because of the reflectance of the aluminum, the designers worked with the printer to solve a problem with UPC scannability. "The Allied Halo people worked with us to increase the opacity of the color behind the code," says Konrad Mulak, vice president of Corporate Visuals. "We ended up adding a yellow on top of white ink behind the bar code. This package format was first seen in the United Kingdom for bread."
The bag has undergone a number of minor changes in the year since it was first introduced into the market, says June DeLeon of Allied Halo. "We’re always looking for ways to make it more economical and to process better. We have one bagmaker that runs two shifts just on this project."
In Ontario, Canada Bread markets Dempster’s in a 675-g loaf; in Western Canada the size is 570 g.
The pricing is proportional, Morrison says, but always about 20¢ higher than other brands and 50¢ higher than private-label prices for sliced white bread.
"Originally, we were told that because consumers can’t see the bread, that would be a barrier to purchase. So we did a lot of consumer testing upfront," Morrison says. "Consumers say that freshness is the number-one priority in white bread, so we thought our packaging and product proposition fit that segment best. Plus sliced white bread is the largest in the commercial bread market, and we wanted to go after the biggest part of the business.
"We had high expectations based on our research," she adds, "but the results have exceeded all of them."
In the AIMCAL competition, the judges called the package a "breakthrough" for the product category. While the bag wrinkles where it’s closed with a plastic clip, "there is no flake-off" of the metallizing, one judge notes.
