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Hybrid plastic tub is DuPont Diamond Winner

This year’s 2015 Diamond Award Winner in the annual DuPont Awards involves one brand owner’s leap of faith in a unique innovation in plastic packaging.

IPL's SkinnyPack for Ana's Salsa is the 2015 Diamond Award winner in the DuPont Awards competition.
IPL's SkinnyPack for Ana's Salsa is the 2015 Diamond Award winner in the DuPont Awards competition.

The hybrid plastic tub, made by injection molder IPL Inc., was described by the DuPont Award judges as the kind of thing that “highlights the world of possibilities that exist for packaging.” In November 2014, Austin, TX-based fresh Mexican salsa maker Ana’s Foods became the first to package its products in IPL’s SkinnyPack™, an injection-molded polypropylene container that combines the advantages of flexible film—lightweight, flexible, and printable—with the benefits of a strong, rigid plastic frame.

The collaboration began in June 2014, when Ana’s was approached by IPL with a prototype of the SkinnyPack. “We were looking for new packaging to replace our deli-style tubs,” says President/CEO of Ana’s, Anna Olvera-Ullrich. At the time, the company was using two container formats: a standard, 16-oz round in-mold labeled tub and a 12-oz single-use deli-style tub with hand-applied labels. While the 16-oz rounds met Ana’s requirements, the 12-oz tubs often leaked and “did not look very appealing,” says Olvera-Ullrich.

The SkinnyPack not only offered Ana’s greater shelf appeal for its product, but it also provided them with a more eco-friendly package. The container is manufactured by fusing a multilayer 2.36-mil adhesive-laminated film, constructed of PP/ink/PP, to four rigid PP posts, resulting in a square/round shape, or “squround,” that allows for graphics on all four sides. The lighter-weight package uses 54.8% less plastic than a rigid tub and, being constructed completely of PP, is 100% recyclable. The format is also stackable, resulting in cost reductions in shipping and stocking.

“We immediately liked the look of the new tub and felt that it had the potential to replace our existing tub with something that would really attract customers’ attention on the shelves,” says Jim Ullrich, Senior Vice President of Ana’s. “We also appreciated the minimal use of plastic that made it extremely eco-friendly.”

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