New technology will provide manufacturers with the potential to provide consumers with extra information at the point of purchase. Consumers will be able to use their mobile phone to scan the package and access a wide range of information from in-store promotions to ingredient information and product surveys. The Graphic Packaging Corporation has launched the ‘Snap2C’ portfolio of paperboard package enhancements and claims the technology will integrate the promotional effectiveness of... ...Read more »

To tap into the growing number of consumers seeking more information about what is in their food, Campbell Soup Company is to launch a new range of soups with ingredients that are instantly recognisable and labels designed to outline cleanly and simply what is and isn’t in each product. According to recent research by the Hartman Group more than half of consumers are now more likely to read label information because they’re curious about what’s in their food. Further, a Nielsen... ...Read more »

ConAgra Foods, a leading North American packaged food company, has reported that they are the first company in North America to incorporate post-consumer recycled plastic in their frozen meal trays, which will divert approximately 8 million pounds (about 3.6 million kg) of plastic from landfills to the recycling stream annually. ConAgra Foods has begun to use between 30 percent and 40 percent post-consumer recycled plastic in nearly all of its frozen meal trays for Healthy Choice, Banquet, Kid Cuisine... ...Read more »

New Zealand can no longer rely on being the lowest cost producer, with its food industry needing to raise its game to adapt to the changing economic climate of the global industry, according to Professor of Food Marketing Dr David Hughes from the Imperial College London. His advice, while primarily directed toward the New Zealand food industry, is also relevant to Australian producers and manufacturers. Quality products, not fancy packaging Consumers, despite more difficult economic conditions, are... ...Read more »

Research and development work into boosting the recyclability of plastic milk bottles is to be launched by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme).WRAP is inviting tenders to develop a cost-effective label, ink and adhesive system for use on HDPE milk bottles that will not contaminate the plastic during recycling, with the aim of encouraging its greater use in new bottle manufacture. WRAP’s target is for 50% of the milk industry’s capacity to commit to implementing the new system... ...Read more »

New legal controls, including cross-border laws, are needed to halt all marketing of junk food and soft drinks to children up to 16 years, according to new proposals from the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO). The only promotions permitted to target children should be for foods which meet strict criteria for a healthy diet, says IASO’s policy arm, the International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF). An IOTF working group is calling for legal steps as part of an international... ...Read more »

The US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service has discovered that the use of nutritional labels by American consumers has fallen since the mid nineties. The only increase in interest by consumers came with regard to fibre. Packaged and processed foods sold in the United States began carrying standardized nutrition labels in 1994. A standardized ‘Nutrition Facts’ panel, standardized serving sizes and limits on the content and format of health and nutrition claims on the... ...Read more »

UK retailer, ASDA, has launched an innovative recycled cardboard milk container: the first milk bottle in the UK to be 91 per cent recycled (from waste office paper) and 99 per cent recyclable. The two litre milk bottle, created by GreenBottle, has a carbon footprint that is 48 per cent lower than plastic. GreenBottles have an outer shell which is made from recycled paper, which can then be further recycled. The low density inner liner, which takes up less than 0.5 per cent of the space of a traditional... ...Read more »

The Council of Better Business Bureaus has released its first report on the progress that participants in BBB’s groundbreaking self-regulation program - the ‘Children’s Food & Beverage Advertising Initiative’ - have made in changing the children’s food and beverage advertising landscape. BBB has assessed the participants’ compliance with their pledges regarding child-directed advertising of their food and beverage products and concluded that the participants... ...Read more »

Nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) of American consumers say they notice nutritional information on food packaging more often now compared to two years ago, according to a new global online survey by The Nielsen Company. Nielsen also discovered that, while two-thirds (67 per cent) of US consumers claim to “mostly” understand the nutritional information on food packaging, less than half (44 per cent) of global consumers suggest they do. “As obesity rates continue to rise globally... ...Read more »