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Jalapenos 'wheel' to market in new jar

New barrier plastic jug offers convenience, safety and disposal improvements.

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A versatile new square jug molded with a grip feature has Pacific Choice Brands excited. Not only will the company triple its use of the container in '98, but the number of products packed in it will widen this year.

That's really good news for Pacific Choice Brands, and for Continental Plastic Containers (Norwalk, CT), the container molder. However, Pacific Choice, a Fresno, CA, food packer, is staring down the barrel of El Ni"o and its limitations on California harvests. Although it wants to increase sales of products in the container, it knows it will be hampered by reduced supplies of jalape"o peppers, the only product that has thus far established a history with the container.

"Our first customers had a very good reaction to this new container," says Bonifacio Villalobos, technical director for Pacific Choice. "Customer response to the container was strong last year. That's why we're expecting our usage to triple this year."

Pacific Choice is a versatile food packer with a majority of sales serving as a copacker or contract packager of some 400 different products. It does market some product under its own labels, including Monterey Gold. Originally, Continental brought the container to Pacific's attention when it was still in concept stage. The blow molder's Lamicon® technology produces a six-layer bottle primarily of polypropylene, but with ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer for its oxygen barrier properties. This container was designed primarily as a convenient replacement for #10 steel food cans, the staple of the foodservice market. Foodservice, however, was not the primary market for Pacific Choice, nor for most of its customers.

In packing jalape"o peppers, most of Pacific Choice's copacking volume was in smaller retail-size jars. However, when these retail marketers saw the barrier plastic jar, they saw it as a way to move into foodservice distribution, says Villalobos. In the past, some of these same customers were buying peppers in #10 cans packed by Pacific Choice or by companies in Mexico. "These were the companies that saw the value added by this container," says Villalobos. "They saw this container as helping them develop a new, more upscale market."

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