High-Capacity Line Supports Sweetener Launch

A breakthrough all-natural, zero-calorie sweetener from Cargill, Truvia is packed in a unique, hooded carton on a custom line that produces nearly 300 million cartons/year.

10/11/08 A bright, white windowed “greenhouse” erected in the center of New York City’s Rockefeller Center in July was the setting for the debut of Cargill Health & Nutrition’s new, first-of-its-kind all-natural, zero-calorie sweetener, Truvia. Giving consumers their “first taste moment” of the new tabletop sugar substitute, the Truvia Greenhouse provided sweetener samples, as well as an exhibit detailing the journey of the product from the stevia leaf to the sachet—a journey piloted every step of the way, from field to formulation, by Cargill.

“The company has invested more than five years of development into all facets of the sweetener, first identifying the best-tasting parts of the plant and then producing a high-purity extract that is the basis for both our ingredient business and our tabletop sweetener,” says Truvia director of communications Ann Clark Tucker.

“This is the right time to introduce the product because people care even more where their food comes from, what is in it, and all the care that went into delivering it to them. The world and food companies have long been looking for a natural, great-tasting, zero-calorie sweetener, and now it is here.”

To meet the anticipated clamor from consumers for its new product, two years ago Cargill began working with co-packer and packaging equipment supplier Cloud Packaging Solutions (www.cloudps.com), Des Plaines, IL, to develop a line that could meet Cargill’s requirement for 275 million cartons of Truvia in 2008. Making that goal even more challenging, Cargill designed its secondary carton with a unique four-corner glue/three-flap hooded lid. This necessitated the development of new carton closing machinery from Delkor Systems, Inc. (www.delkorsystems.com) capable of producing and gluing the hood at high speeds.

The new Kapstone carton closer joins three rebuilt Cloud horizontal form/fill/seal machines, a new product feed system, and custom conveyors and a carton former from Delkor to meet Cargill’s high-output expectations.

Packaging reflects simple, wholesome message

Truvia sweetener is made from the leaves of the stevia plant, a shrub native to Paraguay and today commercially grown in China. While offered for years as a dietary supplement in health food stores, stevia has not been available in the U.S. as a natural sweetener until now.

Unique among Cargill Health & Nutrition’s nutraceutical ingredient formulations, Truvia is the first product from the Cargill business unit to be sold at retail, in addition to its use as a food additive. Explains Cargill Health & Nutrition vice president Steve Snyder, “This new, natural sweetener leverages Cargill’s expertise in specialty food ingredients, agronomy, food science, and safety, as well as consumer insight and marketing capabilities.”

Secondary packaging for Truvia was designed to both provide a point of differentiation on shelf, as well as convey the product’s clean, wholesome nature. A crisp, white rectangular carton, in 40-, 80-, and 140-packet sizes, includes a functional, reclosable lid so “that the carton can be displayed on a consumer’s table or countertop,” says Tucker. Cartons were designed and are supplied by Americraft Carton, Inc. (www.americraft.com), using 18-pt. SBS.

Pentagram Design (www.pentagram.com) created the spare and simple graphics that decorate the carton and the sweetener sachet. These include the Truvia logo in shades of green, along with the image of a strawberry dipped in the white, powdery sweetener. Copy on the bottom of the carton indicates that it is printed with soy ink.

Co-packer addresses unique package requirements

As Cargill Health & Nutrition contract manufacturing manager Drew Pecore tells Packaging World, Cloud was selected as the co-packer for Truvia due to “its experience, nimbleness, and capacity, and for its ability to adapt to a packaging style completely new to the retail industry.”

Established in 1929, Cloud began as a packaging equipment manufacturer, designing bagging machines, form/fill/seal systems, and rotary-drum and filter-pack machines. In 1959, it expanded its services to include co-packing. Cloud’s customers include the world’s top-20 multinational food and beverage companies. Three facilities covering 350,000 sq ft make up its Food & Beverage Contract Packaging business.

According to Cloud vice president of sales and marketing Mike Werner, Cloud’s biggest challenge in creating a dedicated, turnkey packaging line for Cargill’s Truvia product was to find the space within its Des Plaines facility. “As a result, we had to tear down walls and combine several packaging rooms,” he explains. In response to ceiling-height constraints, Cloud designed a new custom product feed system to deliver the powdered Truvia product to each of three pouch machines.

From Pecore’s perspective, the largest hurdle was “coming up with a high-capacity line right from the start.” Werner concedes that rebuilding three Cloud machines fast enough to meet Cargill’s aggressive timeline was also a challenge, as was finding a carton-closing system that could accommodate the carton’s hooded-lid design at high speeds.
Delkor provided the carton-closing solution by adding patent-applied-for “intelligent positioning” technology to its existing TSC600 carton closing machine, redesignating it the Kapstone. The technology precisely aligns the leading edge of the carton and the scored, foldover front flap during sealing using a servo-driven carton positioning mechanism that consistently produces a symmetrically sealed carton at 150/min. The system is equipped with Allen-Bradley CompactLogix controls and an Allen-Bradley PanelView HMI from Rockwell Automation (www.ab.com).

Carton closer employs intelligent positioning

Operation of the carton closer begins when a line of formed and filled cartons feeds into the machine after being conveyed from the filler, with the carton’s side panel leading. As a carton enters the machine, its open lid is plowed down by a mechanical guide rail in such a way that it rests flat and unsealed on the open top of the carton. Twin infeed side belts pull each carton away from the succeeding one to create an approximate one carton-length gap or separation between them.

Next, an intelligent positioning servo wheel positions the carton’s foldover front flap into precise placement in relation to the leading vertical edge of the carton to ensure that, when closed, the front flap will perfectly align with the carton’s vertical sidewalls. Hot-melt adhesive from Nordson (www.nordson.com) is applied to the front face of the carton, and the front flap is plowed down 90 deg (from its parallel alignment to the carton base) to the front face of the carton. Compression rollers compress the lid to the carton face to initiate a precise, secure bond.

The carton then moves through a 90-deg servo transfer station where its movement direction is altered from side-panel leading to front-panel leading by means of servo-controlled squaring lugs. After the carton passes through this station, mechanical plows tuck the front hood flaps along the side of the carton, and hot-melt adhesive is applied. The two “charlottes,” or side flaps, are then mechanically plowed down and adhered to the front hood flaps. The carton then moves into the compression section, where the two charlotte flaps are c