A flour product adapted especially for its resealable plastic flour pouch and a vacuum packed chocolate bar are two products that stand out above the raft of new dry food launches, according to Mintel’s Global New Products Database (GNPD).
In the second part of FoodProductionDaily’s special edition on dry food packaging, manufacturers of Farin’ up flour and Vero chocolate reveal the drivers behind the packaging concepts and the production challenges they had to overcome.
Adapting the product to the packagingBrand: Farin' Up
Company: Moulins de Kleinbettingen, France
Category: Bakery
Sub category: Baking ingredients & mixes
Launch Type: New product
Product: Lump Free Wheat Flour
Package Type: Flexible stand-up pouch
Closure Material: Plastic
Package Width (mm): 145 mm (5.71 inches )
Package Height (mm): 195 mm (7.68 inches )
Packaging Description: Pouch with an injection moulded cap.
Markets available: The product has been launched in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and is about to be introduced to Germany.
Mintel product description: New under the Farin' Up brand is Farine Fluide Sans Grumeaux (Lump Free Wheat Flour).
The product retails in a 750g resealable pack that offers precise pouring, is waterproof and easy to dispose of.
Material: A mix of PE (polyethylene) and PET (polyethylene terephthalate)
Packaging type: Doypack
A spokesperson from Moulins de Kleinbettingen said:
What’s innovative about the product? As far as we know it’s the only packaging of this kind for flour.
Adapting the product to the packaging: Designed together with Pack Solutions, the packaging was originally launched two to three years ago for the sugar market. Pack Solutions then came to our company and asked if we wanted to do this in flour.
The packaging had to be adapted to cater for the flour product. One of the first challenges to be met whilst designing the packaging was the size of the spout which had to be made bigger.
More unusually, the product itself had to be adapted to fit the packaging. We had to develop a new type of finer flour so that it could flow optimally out of the pack. This was achieved by using an extra/additional sieving technique (compared to main-stream flour), which is used to make the flour grains finer.
The fine flour sold in this particular type of packaging is very good for fine pastry, pancakes, but not especially good for bread flour, as this type of flour only contains the center (endosperm) of the grain.
Sustainability challenges: If you want a practical product you need to sacrifice sustainability. Unfortunately, there is no credible alternative today, but a lot of progress is being made in this domain and we are confident that we will be able to offer our products in biodegradable packaging in the coming years.
Moulins is working on making the packaging more sustainable. We’re trying to find a plastic which is 100 per cent biodegradable but an affordable alternative has not been developed yet.
Transparent: This is a good packaging product for flour as it’s transparent, therefore the flour can be seen by the customer to assess its quality.
Control over quantity: One of the product’s main assets is the spout, which enables the customer to pour the exact quantity of flour that they require. With traditional packets you get flour everywhere, this packaging offers control for the consumer for a type of flour that is used in fairly small quantities.
Customer feedback: We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from all ages, a group of customers aged around 80 years old told us they’d been waiting 60 years for this type of product!
The future: Moulin is currently developing designs for Bioflour and couscous which could be ready by the end of the year or early 2012.
By Helen Glaberson, April 2011 (Food production daily)
Zum Verkaufsstart in Deutschland ist Farin'UP Premium Mehl an sämtlichen Verkaufsstellen vom 1. bis 31. Dezember 2011 zum Aktionspreis erhältlich. 
