Packaging reduction design, Nestle, Wrigley has already begun action!

[Chinese Packaging Network News] "For food, packaging is very important: through effective food packaging can avoid food contamination and decay, reduce food waste. However, people often do not like packaging, because people consume large amounts of food every day, resulting in The packaging waste has become one of the most important sources of household waste, and discarded and wasted packaging materials can be seen everywhere.In order to alleviate this contradiction, foreign food companies have been devoting themselves to “downsizing” the packaging to the end.

Under the premise of satisfying various functions of packaging, the use of packaging materials is minimized, and resource consumption and the amount of packaging waste are reduced from the source. This sense of lightweight packaging has been strengthened in China in recent years, especially in the food field. Technology-leading companies have started to move.

Nestlé: Dedicated to Packaging Reduction Design

The word lightweight is not used overnight for the packaging industry. As early as 1991, Nestlé started to implement lightweighting and reduction projects for packaging materials on a global scale and continued to this day. How to achieve such a huge reduction goal without sacrificing quality and consistent quality? Nestlé China has developed a variety of lightweight packaging solutions for this purpose.

Taking the outer box of Nestle Ice Cream and Five Sheepskin as an example, by optimizing the structure of the carton and reducing the grammage of the carton, the five-layer carton structure with a low profile is optimized into a three-layer structure with a high profile, thereby reducing the weight of a single carton. This improvement program reduces the amount of paper used by nearly 150 tons per year.

Nestle listened to coffee and through technical improvements, the thickness of the can body was reduced from 0.19 mm to 0.17 mm, and the use of iron was reduced by nearly 840 tons per year. In addition, by design, Nestle water bottles not only reduced the weight but did not significantly reduce the strength and still have sufficient support strength. After several rounds of optimized design, the weight reduction of mineral water bottles will reach 30% to 45%. If the tonnage is calculated, it will be a reduction of more than one kiloton, which is a very significant contribution to reducing environmental pressure.

According to incomplete statistics, as of the end of 2010, Nestle has cumulatively reduced its packaging consumption by more than 510,000 tons worldwide, which means that at least 450,000 vehicles will drive the energy needed for one year. Nestlé China also unremittingly develops weight reduction and reduction projects for packaging materials. Every year, it formulates clear and challenging plans. Each project is tracked and promoted by a dedicated team to ensure that it meets the goals set by the plan as scheduled. Nestlé China began to reduce the use of 9 tons of packaging materials from 2007 to 2012 to reduce the use of 2,318.27 tons of packaging materials.

Master Bottled Water: Maximize Lightness

Speaking of lightweight packaging, the bottled water industry is a typical example. The bottled water industry has the highest degree of lightweight packaging. With the passage of time, the packaging materials for bottled water are more and more apt to develop towards lighter weight to reduce waste. Since 2004, Master Kong has started to use innovative technology to take the lead in reducing the weight of bottled plastic bottles from 18 grams to 12 grams. Today, the bottle caps have been refined from 3025 caps to 2925 caps, and the average weight of bottle caps has decreased. 0.3g. Compared with Wahaha and Nongfu Spring, the bottle weight produced by Master Kong is the lightest.

Small weight can also bring great shock. At present, the raw materials used to produce bottled water in the market are basically chemical substances extracted from petroleum, called polyethylene terephthalate, or PET for short. The current price of PET on the market is around RMB 11,000 per ton. At 1.1 cents per gram, it was this unassuming 1.1 cents that became one of Master Kong's cost-saving secret weapons.

In addition, Master Kong bottled water also has a “Cheats for Weight Loss” on the packaging, which is to replace the cartons with plastic film. Since bottled water cartons are basically discarded after they are opened, the benefits of switching to membranes are due to their lower cost and competitive prices. At the same time, the reduction of packaging materials can also reduce the energy consumption and costs of products in the process of logistics and transport, and achieve a win-win situation between the economic benefits of enterprises and the interests of the public.

Wrigley gum: compact bottle

Product packaging eventually becomes waste or trash and is disposed of in landfills and dumps. In order to reduce the impact of packaging waste on the environment, international brand companies have been leading the world in the field of lightweight packaging. Wrigley is a recognized leader in the global confectionery industry, producing and marketing chewing gums, mints, lollipops, hard candy and soft candy products around the world.

At present, Wrigley's famous brands in China include Green Arrow, Yida, and Rainbow Juice. Wrigley is also committed to reducing the weight of product packaging in China. It has also made great progress in reducing the weight of the packaging. In 2012, it successfully reduced the use of 2,100 tons of plastic and 100 tons of aluminum foil in China.

To reduce the weight of the package, we need to use new materials that can reduce the amount of raw materials used for packaging. So far, Wrigley's Yida chewing gum bottled product is considered to be a model for weight loss. In China, this type of packaging is more durable and more sustainable. Compared with bubble caps, the use of new packaging methods reduces the weight of packaging materials used per product by 20%, and reduces the use of 2,500 tons of packaging materials each year.

Moreover, Yida gum bottles can be recycled. Due to the innovative method of using talcum powder as “filler”, the use of plastic is reduced by 50% and the weight of the bottle is reduced by 25% without affecting the original packaging effect.

Helm mints: "thin" to the end

Due to the use of less packaging materials, lightweight packaging is very beneficial to environmental protection, but this is not its only advantage. Lightweight packaging also has many advantages in use, which can effectively reduce the cost of materials is one of the important reasons for the positive response of food companies. . Different from the over-packaging in the gift packaging market, more and more companies are increasingly interested in lightweight packaging, such as the world's largest mint brand, Helm mints.

Sustainable development is the trend of the times and it is also a global topic. For Hewlett-Packard, the world’s leading candy brand, packaging has become an important weight for this global leader in sustainable development. Reducing packaging can bring immediate cost-effectiveness, that is, material, energy, and transportation cost savings. The primary means of packaging weight reduction is to redesign the packaging of each series of products, and to reduce the packaging materials by reducing material thickness, thinning, reducing the number of layers, and changing the packaging materials.

In the case of Heine mints for young consumers aged 25 to 35 years, they reduced the size of the wax paper inside the package and saved 6% of the material; the candy-wrapped paper uses a new BOPP material instead of the MB666, while heat sealing The use of “Sarrine” was reduced in the layer; the weight of the paper in the external packaging paper was reduced, saving 30% of the paper consumption; the thickness of the exterior transparent film of the display case was reduced, saving 8% of the plastic consumption.

In the entire packaging industry, in the daily design, as long as the company is careful, it is easy to reduce the use of 10% to 20% of the packaging, which is a reduction of millions of tons for the entire country, even for its own company. Cost optimization.