Page 58 - Food & Drink magazine June 2021

FOODPRO IN-DEPTH
Shaping the future of the F&B industry
As packaging and processing pioneer Tetra Pak marks 60 years of F&B innovation in Australia, Lindy Hughson sits down with Andrew Pooch, MD Tetra Pak Oceania, to talk about the heritage of the brand, milestones on the journey so far, and the view down the road ahead.
production and in the 1980s Tetra Pak cartons were again first used to launch Just Juice fruit juice, which is still on our shelves today.
In the 1990s, Tetra Pak UHT applications were adopted for the first plant-based UHT product, Australia Natural Products’ soy milk, also still available today.
STEP INTO PROCESSING
In the same decade, Tetra Pak’s owners purchased its long-time project partner, processing
STAND L✷21
MAIN: Ruben
Rausing and colleagues with the
first Tetra Pak model to demonstrate the idea of a filling concept, built in 1946.
ABOVE: The Sunny Boy ice-lolly package made Tetra Pak a household name.
the emergence of HDPE bottles, which remain prevalent today. Meanwhile, by the 1970s,
aseptic processing and packaging technology for UHT milk had been commercialised, and this boosted growth for Tetra Pak’s carton lines. Around the same time, the company opened its own packaging material plant for both pasteurised and aseptic material in Fairfield, Sydney. (This has since closed, with the company’s expansion globally seeing centres of excellence for material supply and production emerging in other markets, like Singapore and Taiwan.)
With a local material source, the company ramped up
ANY story on Tetra Pak must start with the classic tale of how the company’s founder, the late Ruben Rausing, while attending university in the US before World War II, witnessed the emergence of self-service retail and observed the gap in self-service packaging. On return to Europe, as Tetra Pak Oceania MD Andrew Pooch relates, he realised the trend would soon find its way across the Atlantic, and he set about filling that market opportunity.
“So unlike most entrepreneurs who have a fantastic idea, and then have to create a market for the product, he saw the market, and created the product for it,” Pooch says, “and it’s this form of innovative thinking that has been a hallmark of Tetra Pak since its inception.”
The global company was founded in 1951, and within six years it had established a presence in Australia. By 1959, Tetra Pak had packaging
installations in Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth – the latter at Brownes Dairy Company, which remains a customer today.
While the company was progressing the dairy side of the business, in the early 1960s it was the iconic Sunny Boy ice-lolly package that made Tetra Pak a household name. This pack marked Tetra Pak’s first foray into non-dairy products, a success the company would come to repeat many times over with the aseptic packaging for fruit juice, coconut water, water, and plant-based ‘milk’ products.
In the late 1960s, the pasteurised milk market – previously dominated by glass packaging – opened its doors to the gable-top carton, and by the 1970s, 20 per cent of Australia’s pasteurised milk was in cartons. Fast forward to the 1980s, the glass bottle share had dropped to two per cent, but the carton’s dominance was short-lived in fresh milk with
company Alfa-Laval.
“So suddenly, we had a
company that could think about ‘cow to consumer’ and
we still do today. This is probably one of the most significant changes that has impacted the dairy industry in Oceania,” Pooch says. “Now we were working closely with farmers, via our sister company DeLaval, and dairy processors, introducing our technology, ramping up innovation, and driving the proliferation of dairy products.
“In two generations we have seen an innovation explosion
in the dairy category. You only need look at the many
types of milk available today, yoghurts, butters, cheeses, creams and ice
creams,” he says. “And the beauty of it is, as technology has advanced, we have been able to tailor products to consumer preferences in different markets,” Pooch adds.
“Product customisation, I predict, will be one of the biggest drivers of growth in our business. We can, for example, through ultra-filtration, concentrate
the protein of a product, and through other processes we
can modulate the fat content
or add micro ingredients
like lactoferrin – delivering consumers the perceived benefits they want to suit lifestyle or health management.”
“Consumers in Asia don’t mind paying for quality products, but they also want to be assured of the quality. UHT milk made in Australia and New Zealand is in high demand from Asian consumers, and I think that demand will continue to grow in the future,” Pooch says.
58 | Food&Drink business | June 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au