Recipe for success: optimal pot for Optimel salad

A different shape and a convenient lid make the SuperLock® pot a great match for a new range of healthy and tasty Optimel® salads from Friesland Campina produced by the Dutch company Royal Smilde Foods. Shortly after the product launch, sales figures are already ahead of forecast.

Friesland Campina, the Netherlands, knows that the customer is king. So, when a consumer survey showed a craving for healthy salads, the cooking crew behind the popular brand Optimel teamed up with Royal Smilde Foods and they went straight to the kitchen. Together, they created three new tempting varieties: capsicum & cucumber, celery & apple and curry. The range contains no fat and no added sugar, and all three 175ml salads are delicious on toasted bread for an easy and healthy lunch.

Popular and easy to spot
The Optimel salads, which have already become very popular, are easy to spot in the cold counter at supermarkets in a SuperLock® pot with its striking blue coloured lid. However, according to Royal Smilde, another reason that the pack stands out on-shelf is its round shape, which sets it apart from the square packs in which cold salads are usually sold in the Benelux. The different rounded look also highlights the fact that Optimel salads are new and different, containing significantly less calories than other salads. 

The packaging is a good match and part of the success
The SuperLock® pot is developed and produced by Superfos, a company of Berry Global. Janine Schraa, Product Manager at Smilde, reports a great start shortly after the launch:

“It is still early days, however the first results show very good sales figures. Pleasingly, we are ahead of our sales forecast. An effective advertising campaign run on several channels helps to promote the new Optimel salads but, clearly, we consider the packaging to be a very important part of our product concept − and its success.”

According to Janine Schraa, the end-users like the fact that the SuperLock® packaging solution is completely effortless to open and re-close, so that any remaining content can be saved for later in the fridge.

A ‘Plastic Hero’ for easy recycling
As Dutch consumers not only pay attention to convenient healthy eating, but also to the environment, a ‘Plastic Hero’ logo is included in the In-Mould Label for a more sustainable profile. In the Netherlands, used plastic is collected under a voluntary waste management system called ‘Plastic Hero’. It sends a signal of easy recycling, which is exactly the case, because the SuperLock® container and the lid are made of one single type of plastic (mono-material) which makes complex breakdown processes unnecessary.

Though the timeline leading up to the launch date was very short, Superfos managed a tight planning phase and secured on-time delivery of the pots, ready to be filled at a Grunwald filling line. And from there, the salads in the SuperLock® got off to a flying start.