Urban Accents has given its core line of bottled spice blends a contemporary design. An integral piece of the flavor creators’ business, the spice blends were the foundation of Urban Accents when Tom Knibbs and Jim Dygas began the company in their Chicago basement in 1996.
The SAVE FOOD Initiative has now passed the 1,000 member mark. The 1,067 supporters currently registered include groups of companies, corporations and professional associations as well as research institutes and NGOs from the entire food value chain. With Lidl Deutschland as the latest member, retail is now also represented as a link in this supply chain.
Consumer trends have contributed to a gradual replacement of rigid pack formats by flexible packaging during the last decade or so. Total flexible packaging sales were at $219.5 billion in 2016, with growth expected at an annual rate of 4.3% to $282.6 billion by 2022.
Render, a food company based in Healdsburg, Calif., just launched a snack line called State Bird Seed. A collaboration with award-winning chefs Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski, owners of restaurants State Bird Provisions and The Progress in San Francisco, State Bird Seed is a crunchy mix of puffed quinoa, seeds, herbs and spices that can be enjoyed as a snack or crumbled as a topping on oatmeal and yogurt to salads and meat.
Cannabis continues to grow with many countries legalizing its usage, creating a new packaging segment. In 2018, Canada is expected to fully legalize marijuana, and the U.S. appears to be heading down the same path as more states approve its medical and recreational use.
Shrink sleeve labeling equipment and consumables provider American Film and Machinery (AFM) has relocated its operations to the company’s headquarters in Brooklyn Park, MN.
Packaging machinery sales in the U.S. grew 4.8 percent in 2016, reaching a total of $9.8 billion, according to the “2017 State of the Industry – US Packaging Machinery” report, produced by PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing.
The Dow Chemical Company opens the call for entries for the 2018 30th Awards for Packaging Innovation. Entries accepted through April 12, 2018. The 30th Awards for Packaging Innovation continues the DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation program established in 1986. Dow carries on the tradition of assembling an independent panel of international packaging judges from a variety of disciplines, to provide awards with a global perspective across design, engineering, retail, converting and academia.
va-Q-tec, a provider of thermal packaging solutions for temperature controlled transportation, has opened a headquarters and operations facility in Langhorne, PA. The site will become the U.S. welcome and innovation center and showcase va-Q-tec’s latest products. The company will manufacture small box containers in the new facility, and use the location as a key hub for its rental and repair station.
Consumers have become accustomed to having a wide variety of foods available to them from all corners of the world, no matter what season it may be. The days of being able to eat what is grown or raised on your own plot of land are long gone, especially as the world becomes more urbanized.