Packaging innovation leaders

ThermaSet PET jar — Graham Packaging was named the Diamond Award winner in the 28th DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation competition. *Source: Graham Packaging.*

The DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation program has recognized several food and beverage products for packaging that offers enhanced customer experiences and improved sustainability, as well as cost-efficient production technologies.

Graham Packaging received the Diamond Award, the highest accolade, for its Thermaset blow-molded PET container for hot-fill, pasteurized food. The container offers consumers a shatter-resistant, easy-to-hold, safe, recyclable container that significantly reduces shipping, breakage and other manufacturing costs for the brand owner.

LiDestri Food and Beverage is the first manufacturer to adopt the packaging, using it for the pasta sauce the company makes on behalf of its private label partner. The container is 100 percent recyclable, nearly 90 percent lighter than glass and can meet extended shelf-life requirements due to a thin layer of silicon oxide bonded to the polymer.

“The ThermaSet PET jar offers tremendous benefits throughout the supply chain,” says John LiDestri, co-president of LiDestri. “In the end, it offers consumers a much lighter, shatterproof package, while providing them with the same satisfying safety button pop they are used to with metal caps. Until now, that’s never been done.”

Coca-Cola also took home an award for its Christmas bow label, a modified roll-fed label distributed through the supply chain in a flat form that is turned into a bow when the consumer pulls a tab. The label was produced using a combination of printers in a cost-effective manner that did not impact the high-speed bottling operations.

For more information:

Karen Browne, DuPont Performance Materials, 302-992-2825,
karen.y.browne@dupont.com, packagingawards.dupont.com.

KEYWORDS: food packaging technology

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Debra Schug was Editor-in-Chief of Food Engineering. She began her media career over a decade ago writing and producing broadcast news for both television and radio at the local and national level. She spent many years as the managing editor for two trade magazines in the oil industry and the research editor for an annual petroleum report. She has a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University.