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Annie’s, organic snack food producer, develops sustainable packaging roadmap for using metallized film

Flexible packaging films with complex, multi-layer structures are hard to collect and recycle. Berkeley, CA-based Annie’s unveils their road map for rolling out snacks packaged in recyclable metallized film at Sustainability in Packaging US. in Chicago, March 12-14.

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Patrick Keenan, R&D Packaging Engineer, has worked at Annie’s for the past four and a half years, including a year and a half before the General Mill’s acquisition for $820 million in 2014.

Annie’s produces a wide variety of organic offerings including yogurt, mac and cheese, soups and canned meats, frozen foods, baking, dressings, condiments and sauces, as well as gluten-free, low or no fat, and vegan food with a priority to sustainable packaging. “It was built into the mission of the company, thinking about the earth and the consumer,” says Keenan.

Keenan is not a machinery or packaging line guy, he is strictly materials, selection and design, working with the brand and supply teams to roll out new packages. He works to develop ideas and implements the scale up plan, testing, etc. An engineer, Keenan has spent eleven years in packaging, first in metal food containers and then wine.

Annie’s package design efforts are not guess work. “We get right out there and talk to the consumer,” says Keenan. “Annie’s consumers preferred no-nonsense labeling with clear ingredients."

It makes sense that an Annie’s consumer is interested in sustainable ingredients and packaging. Annie’s has a long track record focused on sustainably sourced ingredients and has now built a framework that helps them assess packaging.

“We copied a lot of what we did with ingredients that was so successful, and moved it into packaging,” says Keenan. Again, developing a framework to assess various materials and find those suppliers whose products are consistent with Annie’s main goal.

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