The Juice Plus+® Company, headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., manufactures and markets Juice Plus+® nutritional supplements, whole-food based products that contain concentrated fruit and vegetable juice powders. The Juice Plus+® line includes Orchard Blend (a fruit juice powder-based supplement) and Garden Blend (a vegetable juice powderbased supplement) capsules and Vineyard Blend berry and grape chewables. These supplements provide all-natural nutrition in convenient forms. Juice Plus+ is committed not only to helping consumers improve their health, but also to preserving the health of the environment.

That is why, when it redesigned the packaging for its blends in 2013, it focused not only on making the package more convenient for the consumer, it also reduced the amount of plastic packaging required to deliver the products. By increasing the number of capsules or chewables per package from 60 to 120, Juice Plus+ replaced the two 17-gram bottles previously required with one 24-gram bottle, a reduction of 10 grams for each package. The ambitious Juice Plus+ goal is to save more than 1,000,000 pounds of resin over the next seven years alone and to decrease the volume of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) used for its packaging by more than 130,000 pounds.

DESIGNED FOR CONVENIENCE

The TricorBraun Design & Engineering Team designed the new custom bottle and matched it with a convenient custom closure. Juice PLUS+ had a definite idea of what shape it wanted for the bottle: a tall, sleek straight-sided cylinder that would be easy for the consumer to hold, with an optimum neck finish that would deliver both filling efficiency for Juice PLUS+ and maximum dispensing convenience for its customers.

The challenge for TricorBraun designers in creating the new bottle was to balance the desired sleek look with a neck finish that would deliver optimum convenience without making the bottle unstable. Given a fixed volume of plastic, increasing the neck finish and bottle diameter would result in a shorter bottle height, while increasing the bottle height would result in a narrower neck finish.

The bottle that balances both is 111mm tall with a 58mm neck finish and is topped with a flip-top closure. After evaluating multiple closure options and taking into consideration production line efficiencies and brand awareness, TricorBraun chose the Weatherchem NutraGen II® fliptop closure for the bottle. This closure ensures that Juice Plus+ customers can conveniently dispense the product by easily flipping open the lid, yet know that their nutritional supplements are safely contained between uses because the lid snaps firmly closed. The NutraGen II closure uses less plastic than a traditional flip top closure, and supports the Juice Plus+ brand with an embossed company logo on its lid.

“Because of our direct sales model, it is important to reinforce our brand to our customers and provide them with an exceptional product that is easy-to-use. This new package helps us to achieve all of these things and improve our sustainability efforts by using less plastic,” says Gary Giles, Vice President of Product and Research for Juice Plus+.

Talk to a packaging consultant now, TricorBraun’s proven process will guide your packaging decisions from napkin sketch all the way to the retail shelf.