Your square deal a day: New York-based nutraceuticals maker Ajinomoto USA’s new Amino Vital® Jel reportedly marks the first time a reclosable pouch is being used to market an energy-boosting gel product in the US. Converted by Ampac Flexibles (Cleveland), the portion-controlled, 4.73-oz QuadPAK™ side-gusset, standup pouch (above) features an EZ Turn resealable top from Seaquist Closures.

Ampac had to overcome several obstacles to commercialize the pouch, the converter says. “When engineering a small pouch, you have to strike a deli-cate balance between height/width ratios so that it can accommodate the targeted volume and still be able to stand up,” explains Craig Rutman, Ampac Flexibles sales/marketing director. Made from a lamination of polyester/foil/nylon/polyethylene, the gravure-printed pouch “looks and acts like a box, except it’s flexible,” he adds. The lamination also needed to be rigid enough to meet drop-test criteria yet have enough “give” to halt spillage.

Ampac Flexibles, long considered a leader in gravure printing for flexible packaging, has invested in an 8-color Toshiba Sectional Drive (gearless) press to enable cost-effective, high-definition printing for this and other similar packaging.

This summer was a hot time for sustainability—at least in the field of new environmentally-sensitive paperboard coatings for hot beverage cups, as two new developments hit the shelves of foodservice operations.

First out of the starting gate in mid-July was Waterbury, VT-based Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ ecotainer1398041963 paper cup (at right) converted by International Paper (Memphis, TN). Unlike a conventional cup, where the inner surface is lined with a petroleum-based plastic to prevent leaking, the ecotainer is coated with a proprietary corn-based bioplastic.

“Consumers will notice no difference with this cup—but the environment will,” says Austin Lance, vice president and general manager of Foodservice Business for IP. Restaurants switching to this cup will reportedly cut the use of non-renewable petrochemicals by nearly a quarter of a million pounds a year. In addition, the material used to create the lining is made in a factory that does not release greenhouse gases into the environment.

IP and Green Mountain Roasters had been working on the ecotainer for more than a year, including a blind market trial of nearly five million cups.

A close second in the race, Cereplast, Inc., a Hawthorne, CA, producer of proprietary bio-based resins and its partners MeadWestvaco (Richmond, VA) and Solo Cup Co. (Highland Park, IL) launched their biodegradable (or compostable) extrusion-coated paperboard last month. The Cereplast coating, with a heat resistance of 220 deg F, replaces petroleum-based coatings in MeadWestvaco’s laminated paper products manufactured for Solo hot cups (below). Initial targets include the growing number of cafeterias and foodservice operations that divert organic wastes to composting facilities. Cereplast resins are formulated from a patented process incorporating starch and other degradable components, including polylactic acid from NatureWorks LLC.

In a vote of confidence, the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) granted MeadWestvaco and Cereplast the first-ever use of its logo for coated paperboard with thicknesses of 4.6 to 32 pt. Products bearing the BPI logo meet ASTM D6868 and are designed to biodegrade quickly, completely and safely.

“MeadWestvaco and Solo’s perseverance in working with us to achieve this milestone clearly demonstrates their commitment to extending the renewability of their paper products to coatings, creating a fully degradable option for paper foodservice and packaging solutions,” says Cereplast president and chief executive officer Frederic Scheer.