Evolutionary strides

Dairy Field, Apr 1999 by Sivak, Cathy

The Dannon Co., White Plains, N.Y., helped to start the kids yogurt craze with its Danimals product. The recent bright redesign of the six-pack packaging features cartoon animal characters and themes including: Jungle Pack, Arctic Pack, Forest Pack and Dino Pack. As yogurt is typically a single-serve product, yogurt companies rolling out line extensions with 24- and 32-ounce containers of yogurt may be a surprise. But it is all part of helping consumers. For those above the average yogurt per capita or who use the product as an ingredient in other dishes, family-sized packages are just right.

Even Yoplait-Colombo USA has gotten into the big arena, with introduction earlier this year of an organic line packaged in 32-ounce containers under the Colombo brand.

Cabot's yogurt line packaging is distributed largely in Vermont, and Cabot worked closely with the state's various waste disposal community leaders to solve recycling issues. A little over a year ago, Cabot made a major packaging switch on its cultured product line from polystyrene to polypropenol.

The change was made to address issues of graphics capabilities as well as offering a better barrier to protect product integrity and ease in recycleability.

"We've been trying to work to make sure that, regardless of what we're using for packaging, there's some recycling use for it," Davis says.

"Things like recycling have become another thing on the packaging development checklist. It has become an issue that I think any marketer worth their salt has to admit that they at least consider now."