The plastic packaging specialist GIZEH has developed a new margarine cup for the British company Dairy Crest. In future, Great Britain’s largest dairy company will use it for uniform presentation of its two margarine brands “Clover” and “Country Life” – instead of the two different cups in the past. Thus Dairy Crest will be able to realise substantial savings in both production and logistics. Since the changeover had to take place during ongoing operation, the specialists at GIZEH were completely in demand.
“The changeover took place during ongoing production at full capacity and was a huge challenge,” stressed GIZEH sales director Robby Schröder. “Over several months we had to simultaneously produce both the old and the new cups on our machines, and do so in enormous quantities.” Weekly telephone conferences with the customer as well as numerous visits and test runs on location at the two filling plants were necessary in order to perfectly match the filling systems with the new cup. And the flow of production during the filling process could not be interrupted through introduction of the new cup.
GIZEH already produced the two different predecessor cups for Clover and Country Life and worked closely with Dairy Crest engineers and technicians on location in order to develop the new, uniform cup geometry. The new cup is intended to set forth the respective brand appearance in harmonious fashion, be as lightweight as possible and be able to be filled using the existing filling machines at two production sites without a problem.
The result is a particularly thin-walled, injection-moulded polypropylene container with a slip-lid. Both the lid and container have been embellished using in-mould decoration in accordance with the respective brand design. The company’s range of products will now be expanded with a new 750 gram container in addition to the previous sizes of 250, 500 and 1000 grams.
Having taken just under twelve months for the project, the smooth transition has now turned into a success: The most popular British margarine brands Clover and Country Life are now available in the new GIZEH cup in supermarkets throughout all of the UK.
More info:
www.gizeh.com