28 Jan 2014
When you reach that lofty place where you can begin your profile with, “Ardagh group is a global leader in packaging solutions,” you can continue along one of two roads.
Road one is straight. It’s for conservative thinking, the risk averse and keeping what you have folded neatly inside sealed luggage. Road two is unpaved and less travelled. It’s for those who still behave as though they are young and hungry. This is the road Ardagh is taking, the one in which moving forward is determined by forward thinking.
So the company with more than 100 manufacturing plants in twenty-five countries, 18,000 staff and global sales of more than $AU6.4 billion per annum, keeps winning awards.
If you thought that four last year – from Starpack, MPMA, The Canmaker and Worldstar for an avant-garde Jean-Paul Gaultier aluminium contour Coca-Cola bottle - was a good effort, it has bettered that already in 2014.
Ardagh produced three three of the winners at Worldstar 2013/14 - Absolut Unique, Nemo and Ringo,
Absolut Unique’s unique selling proposition was built around the packaging. Every glass bottle - nearly four million of them - was uniquely designed and decorated. No two were alike. The brand extension launched in Australia via event activations by experiential agency, Sound Alliance, targeting Absolut’s sophisticated and fashionable demographic.
The Nemo can, developed for French vegetable canner, Bonduelle, could potentially save the food canning industry thousands of tons of steel each year.
Its walls are so thin that nitrogen injection is necessary to maintain its rigidity during transit and retailing. It is the result of an advance in both two-piece D&I manufacturing technology and in can processing. With the can's sidewalls thinned by 43 per cent to 80 microns, a 15 per cent weight reduction to 41g has been made. A rather nice side effect is the sense of freshness that comes on opening the can, created by the 'psshht' sound of the pressure release.
RinGo is a new kind of paint can, whose star performer is the 750ml can that is 20 per cent lighter than the standard pack and enables the user to drain the whole content. This can has been re-engineered from top to bottom. A necked in top, as opposed to the straight wall design of a conventional can, reduces the lid diameter and, in turn, material usage. The bottom of the can is also necked in allowing for the use of a smaller end component.
A simple twisting action of a screwdriver at the opening indents opens it. The ring free opening enables all the content to be poured out, with no wasted paint caught under the ring, and, together with the necked in opening and base, reduces the can’s weight.
All three Ardagh Group packs impressed the judges with their originality, attention to detail and functional superiority.
“Winning a Worldstar award is a major achievement within the international packaging sector, so gaining three awards in the same year for products from both our glass and metal businesses demonstrates Ardagh’s commitment to creating brand building packaging for our customers, “ stated Niall Wall, chief executive officer, Ardagh Group.
In Australia and New Zealand, Ardagh Group opted to focus on supplying steel and aluminium food cans and ends and producing steel and aluminium aerosol cans. That has paid off. Ardagh has become a major supplier of cans and the leading producer of aerosol cans here.
