H.B. Fuller Recognized for Novel Retail Ready Packaging Design

H.B. Fuller Company, a leading global adhesives provider, in partnership with Quaker Oats Company and International Paper Company was presented today with an Institute of Packaging Professional's (IoPP) 2014 AmeriStar Award for retail ready packaging designed for Quaker^® Real Medleys^® single serve oatmeal.

Each year, IoPP presents AmeriStar Awards to leaders in the industry, recognizing excellence and innovation in packaging design. The team received the award in the Promotional/Display category.

The team's redesigned Real Medleys packaging provides robust protection that takes the product from shipping to shelf while providing significant cost saving and sustainability benefits. The new packaging replaces a two-piece tray and cover that had to be packed manually with a standard, one-piece RSC case that uses H.B. Fuller's Open Sesame^® tapes, a fully-integrated tear tape system. The easy-open capabilities of Open Sesame creates a clean edge without using perforations, which can weaken packaging. It enabled the design team to reduce material used by 35 percent while maintaining the compression strength provided by the previous two-piece design. This lighter case performs well under extreme conditions and meets retailers' needs for an attractive, shelf-ready display.

In addition to using less material, the new packaging solution improves logistics efficiency. It allows Quaker Oats to use an automated packing line and could increase throughput by more than 50 percent, and by increasing the number of boxes per truckload by 50 percent, it also reduces freight costs and fuel consumption. Additionally, because packaging SKUs were reduced from two to one, the new design takes up less warehouse space.

"It's an honor to help create a solution that provides so many significant benefits to the customer and to have it recognized with an AmeriStar Award," says Steve Ringsdore, vice president, Americas Packaging and Converting, H.B. Fuller. "This is a tremendous example of the type of project we embrace at H.B. Fuller—the opportunity to collaborate with our customers and business partners to not only address the challenges they face, but to raise the bar on packaging design."

AmeriStar Awards are based on packaging innovation, protection, economics, performance, marketing and environmental impact. H.B. Fuller, Quaker Oats, International Paper and other AmeriStar Award winners were honored at the AmeriStar and Visionary Awards Reception today at the EastPack packaging event in New York, NY.