Bombay Petfoods has collaborated with Bonson Industrial to launch a single design footprint for its Jimbo's pet food brand.
The entire range shares the same footprint regardless of volume, enabling Bombay Foods to streamline its filling lines. The shared design makes the food easier to stack on shelves and on transport, offering better pallet utilisation. The new packaging contains less plastic but its design ensures it is stronger and more durable.
Photo-quality graphics can be applied to every surface of the new packaging for greater shelf appeal and improved customer information. Each new container also features an easy open/close tamper-evident lid with tight-fitting seals to ensure product freshness.
Jimbo’s was the vision of Jim Allan, who sought to provide New Zealand’s pet owners with a fresh premium pet food they could trust. It has become New Zealand’s leading chilled raw pet food brand – a supermarket category worth $26 million per annum.
Bombay Petfoods general manager David Allan believes the company’s success is due to a high quality product which makes packaging a key focus.
He's pleased the latest design has solved the problem of multiple container sizes.
“It was a big decision to change our packs, so we started with our current pottle,” he said.
“From there we took the time to review the feedback from our customers regarding what they did and didn’t like about the existing packaging. Only then did we go into design mode.”
After 18 months of searching for a viable long term solution, Bombay found a partner in Bonson Industrial.
“From our initial meetings it became clear pretty quickly that Bonson understood what we were trying to achieve,” said Allan.
“We were blown away by their operation and their unrelenting focus on quality.”
Bonson Industrial worked with QDesign Enterprises to oversee the development of the new Jimbo’s packaging from concept design and product prototyping through to plastic injection moulding.
"We worked with QDesign because they led us through the design development path, engaged all stakeholders and were actively involved in the project management from initial sketch to product launch," David Tsui of Bonson commented.
“The team at Bonson also proved to be a valuable source of insight and direction throughout the process, even working with us to optimise our machinery to work better with the new packaging,” David Allan added.
Jimbo’s new single footprint packaging boasts a wider face for improved filling.
“Previously, when the meat was pumped into a container, there would be spillages between container fills that often resulted in meat getting caught underneath the lids,” recalled Allan.
“The only way to correct this was to pause production to do a manual clean. Since switching to the wider face design this has thankfully become non-event.”
In the past Bombay Petfoods suffered alignment issues when it came to the application of labels, but the new Jimbo’s packaging utilises in-mould labelling (IML) technology creates a more polished look.
As the label is now an integral part of the packaging, the entire container, label and all, can be recycled together.
