Sonoco Products creates new cereal packaging

By Michelle Carolla
WBTW Reporter
Published: May 13, 2008

A Pee Dee company hopes to change food packaging, as we know it.  The Sonoco Products Company in Hartsville created a new type of packaging they hope consumers will embrace.  Who hasn’t either spilled their cereal or crackers out of a ripped bag. Then, how do you seal the ripped bag? It’s an old industry question that Sonoco hopes it answered
“Changing out of the bag-n-box is something people have talked about for year, but people haven’t been successful in making a conversion,” said Derek Trader, Sonoco Market Segment Manager.
Sonoco designers think they solved this problem with a new cereal container, the Linearpak.
Sonoco said the market is buzzing since the launch of the linearpak. They hope the packaging industry will embrace the efficiency of their product.
“Dealing with this bag is what everybody hates, it’s either really hard to get open or you pull it open and cereal goes flying everywhere. You can never get it resealed,” said Trader.
The Linearpak eliminates the bag, comes with a built in barrier, a peel away membrane to keep it sealed and then a plastic flip top lid.
Sonoco said the new packing is also environmentally friendly.  “It’s something that was built into our business model,” said Trader. “Feeding in recycled content at the front end of the process, making the recycled board out of it and then converting it into the consumer packaging.”
Target’s store-brand cereal is the first to use the new Linearpak.  Sonoco hopes the industry will embrace the new technology.
Trader said this new invention should also bring publicity to South Carolina, especially, if the industry moves away from the traditional bag-n-box to the new palmetto state invention.