Articles by Mike Richmond

Sustainability 2009: An Opportunity for Dairy

Sustainable packaging was a relatively new topic when I first wrote about it for Dairy Foods last year.

Mike Richmond First there was scissors, then the press-to-close zipper, and now the “slider” zipper is commonplace for shredded cheese. There are press-to-close zippers on some chunk cheeses, but most

In order to understand the importance of sustainable packaging, it is necessary to understand sustainability and triple bottom-line thinking.

Understanding the importance and value of packaging for new products continues to be a challenge for many organizations. They continue to see packaging as a cost center (the current package is the benchmark and why would we want to pay more than we do now?) and a liability (because the package must run on the current equipment).

As we get older, time seems to go faster. Why is that? I have never heard a good answer, but it was a year ago that I last talked about ice cream packaging.

Traditional labels (paper and film) are still popular and cost effective for a variety of purposes on bottles, jars, cans, and nearly all packages. Shrink and stretch labels, along with polypropylene film labels, are continuing to make in-roads, replacing traditional labels.

Paperboard cartons are a mainstay in the packaging business and a key contributor to the dairy sector.

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Datamonitor has listed the top 10 mega-trends and all have packaging relevance. As a matter of fact, packaging will be an important enabler to these trends in many ways.