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Can Adding Flavor to a Closure Change Beverage Marketing?
Portola Says Yes and They?ve Got the Technology to Prove It
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. :Many of the most creative beverage-marketing strategists are challenged with how to better differentiate themselves in the market and to answer the call for more healthful beverages. It is no surprise that food and beverage companies are now taking a hard look at an emerging new technology that puts desirable flavor within the structure of the beverage?s package. The technology has proved to enhance consumer?s experience of a brand and employ the powerful memories associated with the sense of smell to make the pleasurable experience of a beverage brand unforgettable while also delivering a better performing and healthier beverage.
Portola Packaging, San Jose, California, (www.portolanet.com) is revolutionizing beverage packaging by offering customers closures infused with flavors and aromas at the time of injection molding. The new technology employed by Portola comes from ScentSational Technologies (www.ScentSationalTechnologies.com), Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, developers of CompelAroma, a proprietary and patent protected technology that allows encapsulation of flavor and aroma within the plastic structure of most forms of food and beverage plastic packaging.
CompelAroma?s controlled release of carefully selected, Plastic Encapsulated Flavors allows food and beverage marketers to differentiate brands by creating a more sensual, more memorable and exceptionally pleasurable experience of a brand.
With 14 plants in North America and operations throughout the world, along with other enterprises, Portola Packaging is one of the largest manufacturers of tamper-evident plastic closures, plastic containers, and related equipment and engineering services for the Dairy, Juice and Food industries. For the past couple of years Portola has been developing and evaluating applications for CompelAroma in beverage related products and, according to Rodger Moody, Portola Packaging Vice President of New Product Development, is convinced that ScentSational Technologies? will have a major impact on beverage packaging in at least three major markets.
A Practical Solution to Flavor Challenges
According to Moody, a savvy professional with 29 years of experience with Portola Packaging, Portola became interested in ScentSational?s technology after Steven Landau, ScentSational Technologies CTO, introduced the new marketing concept.
With ScentSational?s Encapsulated Aroma Release offered by Portola, flavors and associated aromas become integral parts of the entire package by utilizing flavored closures which release desirable flavors and aromas upon opening or gradually released into the packaging contents.
When released upon opening, the CompelAromas give the consumer a significant, immediate pleasurable experience of the beverage. When gradually released into the package contents, CompelAromas subtly enhance desirable flavors, protect contents from flavor loss that may occur from oxidation and extended time on the shelf, reduce flavor scalping and inhibit release of undesirable flavors and odors from the package to the product. These benefits memorably contribute to the pleasurable experience of the brand.
Moody?s meticulous evaluation demonstrated clearly that while CompelAroma dramatically benefited many beverages, there are no associated negative influences on the finished products.
?The results of all our testing and evaluations are very positive and we are very excited about future uses of CompelAroma,? Moody said. ?The flavors were long lasting, lasting even longer than we expected, and we found CompelAroma could efficiently be employed without adding another, costly, manufacturing step.?
Demonstrating the ease of integrating the ScentSational process into existing production programs was critical. Moody said. ?It meant that employing CompelAroma was a practical possibility, not a costly, unrealistic idea.?
?As the positives accumulated, the project moved from the back burner to the front, from an idea to an exciting project; a real program conforming to all the ISO standards of R/D,? Moody said.
Water, Juice and Milk
The three areas Moody became most interested in employing CompelAroma are in water, juice and milk packaging. As the project moved along and samples produced, Moody and ScentSational Technologies? Barry Edelstein, ScentSational?s President & CEO and Landau visited water, juice and dairy companies, presented samples, and suggested ways the new ScentSational approach could make brands more memorable and establish new levels of brand loyalty.
?Every company we visited was excited by the prospects,? Moody said. ?Some of the very largest companies are expressing a great deal of interest.?
ScentSational Technologies? CompelAroma uses only FDA approved food grade flavors in a patented and proprietary process. While adding great flavor and aroma to beverages, CompelAroma does not add any sugar, carbs or calories, answering the call for healthful yet flavorful beverages.
Naturally,? Moody said, ?the greatest obvious improvement to a branded product came to bottled water. Within three days of bottling there is a dramatic change in the water. If we place a citrus flavored closure on a bottle of water, the water tastes naturally citrusy ? without the normal oxidation which plagues most citrus beverages, if berry is used then the flavor is of natural fresh berry experience. Not an overpowering flavor in either case, but a pleasurable one?enough to let an consumer know it?s there, enjoy the flavor, remember the brand and show a clear preference for it.
?Essentially, with bottled water, we are using ScentSational Technologies? CompelAroma to create an entirely new beverage category, one that has flavor, offers more varied possibilities than water in conventional containers and is especially attractive to kids and the weight and health conscious consumer. We anticipate that brand name water with CompelAroma will be a very successful product,? Moody said.
While considering CompelAroma employed in juice and dairy product packages Moody?s team realized another benefit.
Whenever heat is introduced in bottling beverages, in any pasteurization process, for example, flavors may be burned off and there may be some introduction of an off flavor or a plastic taste. These off flavors, when they occur, must be masked. To accomplish that, additional flavors have to be added. ?With ScentSational Technologies? ability to encapsulate flavors within the closure and then release them, the need for adding masking flavors in an additional production step may no longer be needed. The ability to effectively and subtly mask unwanted flavors without requiring an additional production step would be a huge benefit,? Moody said.
For hot fill products, ScentSational and Portola are working to standardize the optimum encapsulation and release of non intrusive, but distinct notes of CompelAroma freshness and light flavor from the closure; a release that begins during the heating process and continues throughout the packaged life of the product.
With dairy, Portola is focusing mainly on single serve plastic containers for institutional use. ?With CompelAroma, we can enhance flavor (strawberry and chocolate are the most popular) while actually making healthy dairy products even healthier by adding more flavor with the ability for processors to reduce calories and sugar. In short, with CompelAroma we can help children make a healthy choice of beverage,? Moody said ?enjoy the experience, remember the brand and to purchase it again and again.?
Additionally, Portola is also testing CompelAroma enhanced single serve coffee creamers that allow the consumer to sample the aroma without opening the package.
?Our ScentSational Technologies products are going to be very successful. They are unobtrusive in the performance of the plastic, where you need them to be unobtrusive and they have an impact where you want the impact. They enhance flavor for the life of the packaged product, mask undesirable flavors; and with water, create an entirely new beverage. CompelAroma is an exceptionally exciting development in packaging and may very well significantly change the way beverage brands are marketed,? Moody said.
For more information or to inquire about sample products, contact:
Steven M. Landau, Chairman and CTO, ScentSational Technologies, 425 Old York Road, Jenkintown, PA 19046, 215.886.7777, [email protected]
Barry M. Edelstein, President and CEO, ScentSational Technologies, 425 Old York Road, Jenkintown, PA 19046, 610.527.5889, [email protected]
www.ScentSationalTechnologies.com
Roger Moody, Vice President of New Product Development, Portla Packaging, 890 Faulstich Court, San Jose, CA 95112, 800.227.627 [email protected]