Ecolab's packaging in St. Paul, Minnesota, includes 22 different products for glass, carpets, and bathroom cleaners. It is sold to hospitals and other social institutions, healthcare, and food services. Ecolab's custom 2-liter stand-up pouch reduces waste of resources and enables safe, sealed packaging of concentrated liquid cleaners.
Ecolab's packaging must meet stringent requirements from customers and the United Nations. The company's Oasis ProTM 2 litre self-supporting bag concentrate cleaner also meets the criteria of another important agency, the American Packaging Professional Association. The IoPP jury awarded Ecolab's vertical bags with the 2003 AmeriStar Award.
“It is difficult to find a packaging material that will accommodate all of these high-concentration chemicals and meet the requirements of the United Nations Regulations for Transport of Dangerous Goods,” explains Tom Berg, ecolab project engineer. "We have solved this problem with a very special packaging."
Unlike conventional stand-up pouches, Oasis ProTM custom pouches are made of 0.15mm thick material, 25.4cm x 22.8cm in size and placed on a 12.7cm wide support base for good stability.
According to Ecolab, the bags after use are easy to collect and can be burned, and many customers want this. Because for them, waste storage is a serious problem.
This bag integrates an IPN Clean ClicTM dispensing attachment to quickly connect Ecolab's delivery system. This technology is unique to Ecolab in its market. Ecolab likes this one-piece injection accessory, which helps customers avoid direct contact with the cleaner. The attachment has a 4 mm filling nozzle. Jane Chase, Ecolab's packaging director, said that the supplier of the bags heat-sealed the accessories to the corners of the bags, a challenging technical development project.
"With this accessory, users will not be exposed to the product," Chase said. She pointed out that the attachment is a one-way check valve, and when the filling or dispensing head is retracted, the attachment is automatically sealed again, so that the bag and the attachment maintain a good seal when not in use.
The bag is affixed with a two-color pressure-sensitive label. The tag structure must be able to withstand strong chemicals from surfactants to corrosive and acidic formulations. The product label uses color as the code to match the corresponding delivery location on the Oasis Pro distribution system. For example, the pink label on marble safety cleaners indicates to the customer that the pink label should be delivered, thus reducing the possibility of user error.
The bag is filled with Ecolab's new system single head semi-automatic gear pump dispenser. The filling head is filled with accessories. When the filler head is removed, the bag attachment is resealed. This filling process eliminates the air in the bag and reduces the time required for the customer to prepare the dispenser in advance.
Each cubic box is filled with 2 bags of 2 litre bags filled with detergent product. The Class B corrugated carton has a size of 21cmx16.5cm x 19cm. The face text is printed in two colors. There are Class C corrugated partitioned cushions in the box to separate and protect 2 bags during transport and storage.
During storage and transportation, each box is loaded with 2 bags and each pallet is shipped with 198 boxes. The product volume of each pallet increased by 42%, and the pallet volume efficiency also increased nominally from 82% to 87%.
Comprehensive results
This bag was launched in the first half of 2003 and was transformed from a 900-gram capacity HDPE bottle and an 11-liter HDPE tank. When changing from rigid to soft, Ecolab achieves twice the strength of a specific solution, further reducing resources. This change reduced the weight of the package by 82%.
Randy Lia, Ecolab's senior marketing manager, said the new packaging improves safety and meets product usage and storage requirements.
"Using smaller packages is another advantage customers need," said Lia, noting that 11-liter cans can hold 12 kg of detergent. "This package is smaller, easier to handle, and takes up less space."
According to Lia, bottled form feedback indicates that customers have two major complaints: leakage and chemical exposure by employees.
"We use two methods to solve these problems." Lia said. "We make packaging and self-supporting, and have a good "sealing" effect. This will improve product safety and consistency, employees are not easily exposed to chemicals."
Use security
Prior to the introduction of the Oasis Pro system, Ecolab's customers stored bottles on shelves and mixed solutions as needed. “Customers often face problems of misuse and dilution by employees,” explains Lia. “Often employees think that if a small amount of effect is good, then more results are better, so the products they mix manually are more concentrated than needed.”
Customers store Oasis Pro bags in custom-designed dispenser cabinets. The pipe connection through the spout allows direct delivery to the spray bottle (3.78 liters per minute) or mop bucket (15 liters per minute) depending on the scale setting. The integrated dispenser cabinet can hold up to 4 different products. The bags are designed to empty when standing, to prevent product leakage.
"We design bags, dispensers and cabinet connections to work together," said Lia. "The color code simplifies the system and ensures proper use of product and dilution ratios.
“This is a global initiative jointly developed with our European Ecolab partners, and it will be launched in Europe and the United States,” he added. These products are sold in both regions and Canada.
The second and main packages are printed in English, Spanish and French. Lia said that it provided information cards in five other languages. Each box costs from US$30 to US$100, and each box packs two 2-liter bags.
"The sales for the first year clearly exceeded our expectations," Lia said. “Our main customer, the hospital and health care house management field, highly agrees with this concept. Most of its success is due to packaging. With immediate visibility, this packaging is extremely interesting to customers.”
Faced with the award for packaging, Berg said, “It was exciting to see our packaging become the winner in attractive retail packaging, which usually focuses on appearance design rather than function. This proves that our packaging is extremely functional and correct.”
