This month we start again our series of new packaging developments. An ingenious packaging format for artisan square sandwiches, Salanova lettuce to grow in your own kitchen, a paperboard handgrenade holding a boxer short, nostalgic paperboard baskets for fruit and vegetables and from Singapore a Rice Dumpling Box made from nostalgic unbleached kraft.
Tri-Star’s Artisan Square Sandwiches
Tri-Star launched a new range of packaging for ‘rustic’ sandwiches – the hand-made, square-cut bloomer-style of sandwich that is currently all the rage in delis and discerning retailers up and down the UK.

The new Artisan range comprises two innovative pack designs – the ‘Bloomer U’ and the ‘Bloomer 2’. The Artisan Bloomer U is a flat structure with sides that click upwards to form a U-shape. This next-generation pack can be flow‐wrapped, wrapped with poly-sheet or simply bagged. It protects the product while in transit and on display and ensures it is highly visible at all times.
The design of the Artisan Bloomer U also helps guarantee that the sandwich stays in great shape and that it is easy to pick up and put down, making it ideal for eating at the office desk or grazing in the park.

The Artisan Bloomer 2, meanwhile, is an off-the shelf pack boasting two cavities that are the perfect shape and size for square-cut sandwiches. The Artisan Bloomer 2 is designed to be bagged but can also be flow‐wrapped.
Created by Anson, a UK packaging manufacturer, the Artisan range will be distributed exclusively by food packaging supplier Tri-Star. The packaging is made of rPET (recycled PET), a sustainable, recyclable material recognised as a BRC food grade material.
Salanova lettuce hits the market in a pot
The Dutch potted plant grower Bunnik Plants has developed a new concept with Salanova lettuce. This concept, Salafresh, was presented at the largest ornamental and flower exhibition in Europe, the IPM Essen in Germany.

The product is sold with a special packaging concept ‘your own salad garden in the kitchen’.
With its numerous, smaller leaves and compact size, Salanova is the perfect lettuce type for this purpose. The consumer has a fun product in the kitchen and it stays fresh for a long time.
The packaging has a QR code that consumers can scan with a smart phone. They will be directed automatically to Lovemysalad.com where they can find and share salad inspiration, recipes and all kinds of other ‘fresh fun’.
The Bazingaa Boxer Hand Bombs
A stylistic package for a pair of boxer shorts used as sport wear or underpants is made from corrugated paper. The package from the God Speed Co. Ltd. from Thailand, is in the form of a rocket capsule depicting on active lifestyle. The capsule can be detached easily from its holder, and the cap removed conveniently to take out the product.

The packaging, 11x6x20 cm, is made from recyclable single wall corrugated board with mono-colour printing.
Baskets and bowls for fruit and vegetables
The carrying baskets and bowls in chip basket design are an own development of the German packaging manufacturer Karl Knauer KG. The challenge was to add moisture protection to the inside, achieve the necessary stability and to meet the requirements for direct contact with food.
The paperboard baskets and bowls for fruit and vegetables are certainly worthy of distinction under the aspect of sustainability. They can replace both plastic containers and woodchip baskets on the fruit and vegetable shelves. They are made of paperboard which has been demonstrably approved for direct contact with food, it also being possible to dispose of it in the recycling loop for waste paper.

Their foldable property reduces the logistical expenditure for the baskets, low-migration inks and the refinements of the inside with a special barrier varnish crown the top quality of the product for everything that is fresh and is to stay that way.
A woven look and surfaces which can easily be printed on, provide manufacturers with all the chances of positioning themselves as a sender of traditionally high-quality original products.
Rice Dumpling Box
The rice dumpling box is a creation to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. The Dragon Boat Festival, otherwise also known as the Rice Dumpling Festival or the Duanwu Jie falls on the 5th day of the 5th month in the Chinese Lunar calendar.
It is shaped just like its content, a rice dumpling, complete with a string. To add to the nostalgia feel, the package is printed on uncoated kraft that brings back memories of the paper bags that were a common sight years ago by simulating the look of the good old brown paper bags.
To instill the value of conserving traditions, the graphics design of the box shows activities relating to the festival such as dragon boat racing and the making of rice dumplings. The box is able to pack six small rice dumplings.
This packaging, designed by Starlite Printers (Far East) Pte Ltd in Singapore, is made with solid unbleached sulphate board. The printing is done on the uncoated kraft surface to give the box a nostalgic look, the colour scheme used is limited with black as the dominating colour to simulate the look of paper bags used commonly in the seventies and eighties. The package is fastened with a string just like a rice dumpling. When the restraining string is drawn, the package closes into its unique shape. The string also serves as a handle. By releasing the string and stretching the side of the packaging, its content can be accessed freely.

As the packaging is not enclosed fully, it allows air exchange which is important to maintain freshness of the rice dumpling. The inner surface of the box is laminated with a layer of OPP film to prevent the seepage of oil from the rice dumpling into the board allowing the packaging to maintain its clean look.
More to come.
If you buy one of the ready-to-drink energy or vitamin drinks in the assumption that it will give you the necessary kick, you might be in for a surprise. The kick is not coming and you discover you just drank a very sweet soda, nothing more. Well, sugar of course gives some extra energy, but the expected dose of vitamins might not have worked.




To my regular readers it is well-known that I object strongly any use of so-called biodegradable or compostable packaging material. First of all no packaging material biodegrades in a landfill by lack of oxygen and the far too few industrial composting facilities often refuse to take packaging material into their processes. Furthermore, let’s face it, there is no such thing as a pure one component in packaging material. There always are coatings or additives and often more than one layer of different materials.
Let’s start with a look at the recycling of flexible pouches, a packaging format with an immense growing potential. Pouches have many benefits such as light-weighting, leading to savings in material and transport costs, but due to the (food) content they often have an aluminium layer, and consequently are said not to be recyclable. It is obvious that brand owners are keen to see this changed, as they want to be able to put a ‘recyclable logo’ on the packaging to reinforce their sustainability credentials.


This residue is dried and broken down into small pieces before being put through the pyrolysis process that involves exposing the material to 400ºC of heat in an oxygen free chamber.

Concluding we can say that the aluminium component in all different packages. from pouches to cartons, can now be recuperated and used as new in the next generation of packages. Now it is up to the Councils to implement a selective collecting system for post-consumer pouches and cartons.
Manufacturing bottles by thermoforming film material is not new. Thermoforming is a generic term for the manufacturing of plastic components through the vacuum and / or pressure forming processes. A simplistic overview of the single-sheet thermoforming process consists of heating extruded plastic sheet and forming the sheet over a male mould or into a female mould. (For a detailed explication of the thermoforming process see the end of this article).

The last months of 2011 have seen some serious publications about Food Safety and Packaging, as well as Packaging and Sustainability. I selected the 4 most important to show for further study here.
As is tradition each end of the year people are reflecting on the results or performance of the previous year. So do I, and I have to say that I am quite proud of what has been reached. I thank all my readers for the attention they gave my blog and I hope that the content has been helpful in their professional lives. Anyway it was and still is my intention to write about developments in packaging technology and explain in detail the innovations, so that even professionals remotely related to packaging do understand the basics and background of packaging technology. And not only that, as I sincerely
This last day of the year, I will not irritate you with a story about packaging. However, stupidity sometimes leads to a form of packaging, very rare in this world. Well, with an open mind, you can call the following example a form of packaging, namely packaging your car between the walls of a staircase. For me, the ultimate in stupidity, but also a nice final number of this year.
This is one of my last articles of this year. We are near Christmas and half of the world has arranged for a short holiday. I can’t imagine anybody having an interest in packaging technology during these days. May I wish my readers a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or whatever you want to call these special days of the year.























