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Delkor Helps Deliver 59% Corrugated Savings with Award-Winning Designs

René-Junior Turcotte sits at a desk with Fruit d'Or packed into Delkor's Cabrio Case

This article was originally published in Canadian Packaging.

Award-winning snack food producer, Fruit d’Or, packages their dried cranberry snack pouches into corrugated cases that serve as both shipping containers and retail ready display trays, eliminating the extra brown box shipper and reducing packaging by 59%.

Watch the full testimonial below.

 

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While the term superfood may have lost some of its mystical aura and allure in recent years due to rampant overuse, one thing that hasn’t changed is the virtually unanimous consensus among leading dietitians and nutritionists about wildberries being the best and tastiest source of fiber, natural sugar, antioxidants and many other kinds of disease-fighting nutrients essential to healthy eating and living.

As a major grower and producer of organic wild cranberries and blueberries, Villeroy, Quebec-based Fruit d’Or takes a lot of pride in its self-styled mission to provide Canadian consumers with all the significant health, nutritional and environmental benefits offered by its surprisingly diverse product range.

Founded in 1995 by Martin Le Moine, the company was one of the first in North America to make a switch to organic farming techniques—perfecting the art of fighting insects and weeds by natural means.

In addition to sparing the soil and the product from presence of toxic pesticides and chemicals such as chlorothalonil, lazoxystrobin, acephate, chlorpyrifos and methamidophos, among others, organically-grown cranberries and blueberries are said to contain up to 30 per cent more antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than their conventionally-grown counterparts.

After overcoming some early growing pains and general market apathy about organic produce at the time, the company leveraged its knack for innovation to develop an extensive portfolio of nutrition and other products utilizing its berries as prime ingredients—making steady market inroads into the ingredients, retail, private-label and nutraceutical co-packing segments.

Sourcing its berries from its own boglands and about 45 family-owned farms across the province of Quebec, the vertically-integrated operation nowadays ranks as the world’s largest grower of organic cranberries and a second-largest organic blueberry processor—with export markets in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Operating three production facilities across Quebec with a total area of more than 550,000 square feet—along with another processing operation in Carver, Ma., acquired in 2021—the company produces a diverse range of products in a variety of formats including dried fruits, concentrates, powders, juice, purées, frozen fruits, seeds and seed extras.

Boasting a varied customer base comprising distributors, repackers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, the company’s berries are widely used across a growing range of everyday foods that include cereals and nutrition bars, dairy products and beverages, baked goods and snacks, jams and sauces, cosmetics, and nutraceutical beverages, among others.

To gain greater visibility and prominence in the retail sector, in 2015 Fruit d’Or launched the Patience SourCran line of dried cranberries, packed in snack-sized, single-serve pouches filled with select, slow-grown dried cranberries flavored with peach, raspberry, cherry, strawberry or watermelon extracts.

Made with simple nutritious ingredients without any complicated ingredients or synthetic additives, the tangy high-fiber berries offer an exceptionally healthy and snacking option with only eight grams of sugar per pouch.

Instead of adding sugar, the slow-dried berries are thinly sprinkled with natural flavors and citric acid to transform them into sour candy-like treats.

All the cranberries used in the SourCran brand pouches are fully grown and then gently dried to the perfect point, according to the company, so that they retain as much of their flavor and nutrition as possible.

“It’s all about making cranberries cool,” says Fruit d’Or’s vice-president of marketing and innovation Caroline Miron, describing the brand as a novel and inspired “snackertainment” product.

It's all about making cranberries cool.

“We wanted to rejuvenate our target audience,” Miron explains, “and so we decided to go on a platform that we call ‘snackertaining,’ whereby the product is intended for both snacking and entertainment.

“As such, it is really targeted at younger consumers by inspiring them to choose a healthier option to mainstream sour candies,” she says.

“When you look at what the younger consumers are looking for in a snack, being healthy and shelf-stable often top the list,” Miron says, citing the SourCran candies’ impressive two-year shelf life.

With the SourCran pouches being adorned with luscious gouache-painted graphics matching the colors with their respective flavors, the brand has steadily built up a loyal following among Canadian and U.S. consumers over the last couple of years, culminating in winning the high-profile 2024 Grand Prix Best New Product Award of the Retail Council of Canada (RCC) in the Sweet Snacks category this past spring.

“We were very thankful and excited to receive this award,” says Miron, crediting much of the brand’s breakthrough mass appeal to the distinct Cabrio Case® retail-ready packaging developed by the Minneapolis, Minn.-based secondary packaging equipment manufacturer Delkor Systems.

Originally invented by Delkor’s vice-president of engineering Rick Gessler about eight years ago, the Cabrio Case was invented specifically to facilitate upright shelf packaging for bags and stand-up pouches of cheese products as an alternative to the traditional peg-hole displays—requiring a fair bit of manual stocking by the retailers’ staff and unnecessary reaching and product handling by the shoppers.

Nowadays widely used for a broad range of single-serve and other smaller-sized food products retailed in stand-up pouches and other flexible packaging formats, the Cabrio Case features a perfectly pre-cut tray front to provide perfect presentation for the product inside the case, standing up or laid-down flat, with its wrapped tray corners and machine-cut front edges and sides facilitating a clean and tidy look for the entire shelf.

Made from a single corrugated blank for optimal material usage and die-cutting precision, the patented tray-hood Cabrio Case is easy to open on the shelf with a single swift motion with no cutting required and, moreover, it eliminates the need for using standard corrugated shipping carriers and boxes to ship the products to customers—resulting in significant savings in packaging materials.

“By using the Cabrio Case as shelf-ready display and as a transportation box all at once, we were able to achieve a 59-percent reduction in the amount of packaging materials used for the distribution of the SourCran brand products to our retail customers,” says Miron.

We were able to achieve a 59% reduction in the amount of packaging materials used.

“It basically eliminated the use of the ‘brown box’ containers for this product range,” Miron says, “while providing an opportunity for extra brand messaging and shelf impact on the exterior panels of the Cabrio Case.

“It’s been a great tool for us since we began using it just over a year ago,” says Miron, “and we were very proud to relaunch our product in this innovative packaging with Delkor’s help.

“In fact, this was one of the most successful product launches we ever had as a company,” says Miron, citing a double-digit increase in sales for the SourCran brand since the packaging switchover.

As Delkor Systems sales manager Matt Meidl relates, Fruit d’Or first expressed serious interest in Cabrio Case packaging two years ago while attending the biennial PACK EXPO International packaging exhibition in Chicago.

“It turned out that the [packaging] line we brought to the show was exactly what they were looking for,” Meidl recalls. “Specifically, the system has fast changeovers and the flexibility to run all the package formats at the speeds they needed: a large Club Store tray format, a retail-ready Cabrio Case, and a ‘brown box’ shipper.

“As Delkor’s case designs are formed from flat blanks, our customers are also able to significantly reduce their packaging material usage,” Meidl points out. “Our customers typically save around $100,000 annually in corrugated for every new line install.”

Installed at the Plessisville plant in May of 2023, the new retail-ready packaging line is comprised of three fully integrated Delkor secondary packaging machines, including:

  • A Trayfecta® X Series Former. Said to be Delkor’s most versatile former to date with a five-axis servo control, the Trayfecta X Series former is capable of producing retail-ready and virtually all other common shipper styles on a single machine, switching from one type to another with a simple, tool-less three-minute changeover.

    Boasting proprietary forming technology that automatically compensates for warped corrugated, and a large-capacity magazine holding up to 500 blanks, the compact machine can form up to 50 cases per minute.

  • An LSP Series Case Packer with three robot cells. Capable of packing pouches and large bags into deep cases at speeds up to 120 products per minute, this newly developed loader can seamlessly place a variety of pouches into multiple types of cases—including club store trays, Cabrio Cases and brown-box shippers—with the choice of laying them flat or standing upright inside the case.

    Equipped with a heavy-duty central vacuum system and vision-guided robotics, the modular system’s three FANUC M10 pick-and-pace robots are perfectly synced to work together to pick pouches weighting up to 20 pounds in any orientation on the infeed conveyor.

    As with the formers, the LSP Series case packer can switch from one type of case/tray to another with a simple three-minute changeover requiring no tools.

  • An F Series Closer, used to seal all the shipper styles produced on the Trayfecta X Series former. The low-maintenance, high-speed carton and case closer features self-tensioning belts to provide long service life and simple belt replacement, combined with oversized bearings and shafts, and lug-less belts to alleviate maintenance problems common to other closers.

    According to Fruit d’Or’s product specialist René-Junior Turcotte, the installation of Delkor equipment has already yielded significant improvements in productivity and energy efficiencies at the Plessisville facility.

    In addition, it quickly accelerated the development of a much more attractive and ergonomic packaging solution with commanding shelf presence and minimal product handling for store staff stocking the shelves.

    “You just tear open the box by tearing back the top of case along the perforations and it’s all ready to go on the shelf,” he says.

    “Retailers love this package,” Turcotte extols, complimenting the thoughtful box design with precision-placed flaps and perforations that make forming and filling the Cabrio Cases a breeze on Delkor equipment.

    “The Delkor equipment enabled us to finetune our packaging process to make sure that every case coming off that Delkor line looks good and functions great.”

    Says Turcotte: “What really impressed me the most about the system when I first saw it at PACK EXPO was the high level of automation built into the equipment.

    “We went to that show looking for a former, a robot filling the boxes with bags and a box closer, and although we could have acquired these machines from several other suppliers, we decided that having one supplier provide all three machines would make things easier for us,” Turcotte says.

    According to Turcotte, it was a wise and far-sighted decision.

    “What really impresses me about Delkor is the way they design and build their machines to make them easy for humans to work with: being user-friendly, changeover-friendly, with smooth operation, and good communication between the machine and the operators,” he says.

    “We only need one operator to run all three machines on the Delkor line,” says Turcotte, adding the line currently runs the Delkor line at average operating speed of 100 pouches per minute.

    Moreover, “Our Plessisville plant has achieved a 30 per cent reduction in energy consumption since the Delkor installation,” says Turcotte, crediting the high level of automation on Delkor’s equipment for a lion’s share of that improvement.

    As Turcotte reflects, “What we really like about Delkor is the service and the experience they have, along with their 24/7 technical support.

    “If we ever have an issue with the material (corrugated board), they immediately help us find a solution to fix it he relates.

    “That’s really the nicest part of working with Delkor—knowing that they always got our back.”

    Miron agrees: “Our new shelf-ready packaging has been very well-received—we really haven’t had any negative feedback since launching it just over a year ago.

    “Having our marketing team and engineers working with Delkor enabled us to execute our most successful product launch to date,” she says, “in a groundbreakingly short amount of time.

    “Partnering with Delkor was a key and strategic initiative that has really accelerated the process of packaging innovation for us,” she adds, “and we are really looking forward to seeing our Cabrio Case packaging hitting the stores right across North America by January.”

    Adds Delkor’s sales manager Meidl: “Fruit d’Or has been great to work with.

    “They are a respected and recognizable brand,” he says, “and we are glad to be their trusted automation partner.

    “We are also very appreciative that they allow us to display their award-winning packaging in our booth at trade shows,” says Meidl, adding that visitors to the upcoming PACK EXPO International trade show in Chicago next month will be able to see the new award-winning SourCran-branded Cabrio Case packaging at Delkor’s booth N-5325 at Chicago’s McCormick Place exhibition centre.

    As Meidl happily recalls: “Overall, the Plessisville plant installation went very well, and the line is running great.

    “We were there to support them and train their operators to ensure the line is running as efficient as possible and will continue to do so,” he concludes.

    “Naturally, we look forward to continuing to support them as they continue to grow their company.”

Topics: delkor systems, case study, retail ready packaging, shelf ready packaging, case packing, robotic case packing, packaging equipment, package design, Thought Leadership, automation, cabrio case, delkor cabrio case, case packers, efficiency, delkor formers, delkor closers, customer testimonial, case former, cost savings, f series former, delkor support, Customer Success, club store trays, LSP Series Case Packer, Trayfecta X Series Former, snack packaging

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