Evolutionary strides

Dairy Field, Apr 1999 by Sivak, Cathy

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., South Burlington, Vt., made big news when it redesigned its ice cream line graphics last year. In 1999, the environmentallyfriendly company stands behind its promise to change the materials its cartons are made from. Kicking off with its top-selling flavor, World's Best Vanilla, the Ben & Jerry's product line is converting to unbleached paperboard.

Paper bleaching utilizes chlorine compounds in a process that Ben & Jerry's reports discharges millions of gallons of organochlorine-laced wastewater daily. The Environmental Protection Agency has identified chemicals including dioxins created in the bleaching process as carcinogenic and highly toxic.

"This technology had never before been adapted to ice cream pint containers. Just being able to fabricate it in round, precise dimensions posed unique challenges for our manufacturing team," says Michael Brink, Ben & Jerry's manager of packaging development.

An exterior clay coating allows the company highquality graphic printing. Andrea Asch, manager of natural resource use for Ben & Jerry's, notes: "We're hoping what we call the ECO-Pint will become the new industry standard for ice cream containers."

New Culture

Perhaps the biggest news in the cultured products comes from the cottage cheese category, where Kraft Foods has put its marketing muscle behind Cottage Doubles under the Breakstone's and Knudsen brands in the summer of 1998

The package is a 5.5-ounce container with a "sidecar" of fruit to mix in and features attractive graphics of fruit-surrounded product.

Also continuing its success is the Breakstone's Four-Pack of cottage cheese, which industry experts credit with turning around the long decline in cottage cheese sales.

As players such as Kraft Foods have rolled out single-serve packaging, the cottage cheese category has benefited.

"One of my predictions did come very true: Once they started packaging cottage cheese attractively, they upped the sales," Dreyer says. "There definitely is the higher-quality packaging all the way around in this category."

H.PE Hood introduced a single serve cottage cheese line as well as its FruitStirs in 1998. The FruitStirs line features fruiton-the-bottom as well as extra-creamy cottage cheese in 6-ounce containers.

Elsewhere in the cultured product category, new processing technology combined with barrier packaging that preserves product integrity is utilized.

The biggest packaging innovation in the yogurt category came with Go-GURT by Yoplait-Colombo USA, Minneapolis. Sold in packages of four, these 2.25ounce squeezable tubes were designed with today's active kids in mind. No spoon is required as the product is meant to be squeezed straight from package to mouth (see sidebar).

"Kids are raving about the fun squeezable tubes that let them take great-tasting Go-GURT with them," noted product marketing manager Karen Kelly Wilber at the time of rollout. Go-GURT was awarded the "Best Overall New Product" award in IDFA's recent marketing contest.

Multi-packs remain popular with the young set as exciting graphics jump out of the dairy case and (hopefully) into parents' carts. Indeed, another YoplaitColombo USA offering in 1999 featured Trix multi-packs of six.