The label on perishable food packages may be extremely transient, but, despite its short life, it is still required to perform the key roles of providing both decoration for retail shelf appeal as well as a considerable amount of product data. Achieving these twin goals can be challenging on small containers, but Harmony Fruit and Yoghurt Desserts, developed by Jowa, a leading Swiss bakery and foods manufacturer for major Swiss retail chain Migros, has proven that it can be done.

The challenge
Harmony Fruit and Yoghurt Desserts are premium-quality, single-service fresh products, with a shelf life of just four days, packed in clear-lidded PET pyramid-shaped containers. They are offered in combinations featuring four fresh fruits – apricot, pineapple, strawberry and raspberry – and provide a delicious and healthy end to a meal. On the retail shelf, for such products, the consumer needs to be able to view the contents; to verify – via the label – the flavor offered; and read all the associated data – nutritional information, ingredients, weight, and sell-by date, etc. Space, however, is limited on the small, unusually-shaped Harmony containers.

A creative answer
Jowa’s Head of Packaging Development, Christian Pfeiffer, knew he needed a special labeling solution, and challenged specialist label printer Pago AG to deliver the answer. Pago is a regular label print partner of Jowa, and has a particular expertise in the production of self-adhesive leaflet/booklet labels. Says Fredy Schöb, Pago sales manager: “Our experience with complex label shapes combined with booklet content really helped us to develop a label for the Harmony desserts that delivered all the content elements our client required and, at the same time, looked attractive and clearly identified the flavor in the pot. As a bonus, because the label also seals the pack lid – it additionally performs a valuable overt tamper-evident function.”

Using a 60 micron gloss white self-adhesive PP film as the base carrier for the FSC paper booklet, Pago prints the labels – incorporating three double-sided pages – by rotary letterpress in six colors using low-migration inks, providing a double-perforated tear-off section as part of the construction. Label content is printed in three languages – French, German and Italian. With the needs of plastics  recycling in mind, the self-adhesive label laminate also features a removable adhesive. Printed in typical runs of 50,000 labels per flavor, the Harmony labels are hand-applied by Jowa staff as an integral part of their production and packaging process.

‘Real food appeal’
Christian Pfeiffer of Jowa is delighted with the end result. “The labels have real food appeal,” he says, “and for the consumer it’s easy to choose the preferred flavor, thanks to the colorful picture of the different fruits. We chose Pago to print them because it has a very good development department, and first-class printing equipment.”

Award-winning labels
The sets of labels for Harmony Fruit and Yoghurt Desserts were also recently recognized by FINAT, the European self-adhesive label industry association, in its annual Label Awards competition. Pago was awarded this year’s top prize in the marketing and end-use category for booklet labels.

Kurt Walker, president of FINAT, comments, “Accommodating the increasing raft of textual content required by law on a food label has meant that label printers today need to be ever more creative. Pago has ably demonstrated that self-adhesive booklet labels can represent an attractive and practical solution.”