SWEET AND SAVOURY FOOD PACKAGING

To meet demand from the growing lunchtime “on the go” food market, multi-material packaging manufacturer Linpac Packaging is continuing to extend its new Freshware range for sweet and savoury foods.

Many of the new packs are individual or twin portion sized to help consumers eat more healthily and help them and retailers reduce food waste. As a partner of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign by WRAP, the company is committed to helping all the links in the supply chain minimise the amount of food that is wasted by developing packaging that meets the needs of changing consumer trends and effectively protects and preserves fresh food for longer.

Joanna Stephenson, vice president innovation and marketing, at Linpac Packaging, said: “The chilled retail convenience market is worth €145 billion across Europe and has continued to grow at a steady rate throughout the recession when many other markets have stalled. Nowhere is the trend for food on the move more apparent than at lunchtimes when people are looking for convenient and healthy food options which they can enjoy quickly and with minimal preparation.”

The Freshware range, which was launched in January to address the increasing popularity and demand for chilled retail prepared and convenience foods, now also incorporates Linpac Packaging’s paper bags. They are ideal for shops and bakeries serving freshly made sandwiches and savoury snacks to customers, providing a traditional way to keep bread and pastry-based foods fresh and crispy, and come in a range of sizes. The bags are available with or without windows and come pre-made or on the reel for use with in-house automatic bagging machinery.

To cater for sweet-toothed ‘snackers’, the company has designed a collection of individual and twin portion size LeanBake packs for baked confectionery such as gateaux, cakes, pastries, slices, biscuits and doughnuts. Like Vertiwrap, the packs are made from crystal clear rPET to enhance product shelf appeal and are available in the style of a hinged box or tray and lid combination.

Ms Stephenson added: “The Freshware range has been designed and developed to support our customers’ convenience as well as sustainability strategy and is manufactured with between 50% and 95% post consumer recyclate to minimise the carbon footprint of our products.

“These latest additions to the Freshware family address the needs of the sweet and savoury food to go sector and sit alongside our meal boxes, containers, pots and tubs which are ideal for salad items, sauces and deli products.”

The Freshware launch follows a major investment by Linpac Packaging to develop its Freshform business. New highly flexible thermoforming capacity has been installed at its Featherstone site in the UK to support the UK and European business, alongside its major Freshware plant in Pravia, Spain enabling fast turnaround supply of new designs for the prepared foods market.

Source: Confectionery Conception (http://goo.gl/Q8TI6T)