Plastics packaging: Sausages bolt from glass for home in polypropylene

The little piggies being sent to market now are packed in plastic, thanks to a move away from glass by German lunchmeats supplier Rügenwalder Mühle. The company's newest brand of fresh sausages (pork and poultry) are being marketed in injection molded, in-mold labeled polypropylene packaging.

Rügenwalder Mühle employs about 340 and has annual sales of upwards of €155 million. Molding and labeling its new resealable plastics packaging is German packaging processor Weidenhammer Packaging Group (WPG; Hockenheim). Not only has the meat supplier done away with glass but it also is packaging the sausages without brew water. Removing the water reduces the weight of the package and also makes for a cleaner opening of the container, so consumers don't have to worry about spills.

The cups are molded in Weidenheim's plastic packaging business unit, which has expanded greatly in the past few years.

"The resealable plastic cup is a whole new type of packaging for fresh sausages," notes Andreas Rothschink, sales director in Weidenhammer's plastics division. The processor molds the transparent PP cups at its facility in Zwenkau, near Leipzig. Each of the 222g cups holds six sausages. The labels, applied in-mold, are partially printed but mostly transparent to allow consumers to see the product. The cups are sealed with a peel-off aluminum foil under the removable, thermoformed and transparent cap.