Page 52 - Packaging News Magazine Sep-Oct 2019

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FOOD & BEVERAGE PACKAGING
No break for KitKat with new pack
Nestlé Australia has developed a packaging solution that allows it to deliver chocolate to most parts of Australia without impacting the product’s integrity. Kim Berry reports.
LEFT: The new packaging solution will allow Nestlé’s Chocolatory to distribute to most of Australia.
BELOW: The packaging also features the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL).
What was required was a winter and summer shipping solution. The winter shipper is simply a box and tissue paper. But the poor insulation qualities of cardboard meant the summer shipper needed to be much more robust, he says.
Adhiputra explains that while many in the industry are using polystyrene or wool, which do work, Nestlé wanted to go “one step fur- ther” with a fully recyclable mate- rial. It has set a company-wide goal that all packaging will be reusable or recyclable by 2025.
“We wanted to get it right the first time,” he says.
Nestlé worked with Sealed Air on a solution fit for purpose. ‘Temp- guard’ contains insulation material made up of recycled newspaper. The packaging solution also contains two frozen cooling pads, which use plastic liners that are recyclable through REDcycle. All the packag- ing can go into kerbside or REDcycle recycling streams.
“We trialled a few different options, and while the Woolcool insulating packaging worked, it was cost prohibitive. We also tried expanded polyethylene, but its insulation was not very efficient, so we kept coming back to this paper solution,” says Adhiputra.
The packaging team ran simula- tions in its lab on what transporta- tion would look like for a peak summer profile. Once it was able to achieve the temperature range needed, the team started working on the full packaging solution.
Artwork has been finalised for the summer shipper, which is rolling out as of September.
The packaging also features the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL), which not only tells you which bin to use, but what needs to be done with each piece of a pack- age to dispose of it in the best way.
The Nestlé brand messaging is ‘Give the Planet a Break’, playing on the ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ tagline. ■
www.packagingnews.com.au
September-October 2019
REATED for the e-commerce arm of its KitKat Chocolatory, the new packaging solution means cus- tomers can order chocolate online and for a $15 flat rate have prod- uct delivered within two to three days in pristine condition.
Packaging technologist Karunia Adhiputra tells PKN Nestlé spent around six months finding packaging solutions that were both recyclable and robust enough to withstand Aus- tralian summer temperatures when transporting specialty chocolate.
E-commerce has been a localised component of the Chocolatory since it opened in 2017. The new packaging solution will allow it to distribute to most of Australia, ex- cluding extremely hot regions. The store in Melbourne’s CBD offers personalised KitKats; customers can enter their details online and its instore digital printer produces
the label that is then applied to the chosen product.
“The challenge is chocolate melts and we need to make sure it is pro- tected uring transportation, wheth- er from climate or impact during courier transport. Our chocolate can typically stay in its shape up to around 22 degrees,” Adhiputra says.