Packaging
Leading Norwegian Free-Range Poultry Producer Stange Adopts Darfresh(R) for First Class Performance
Tuesday 03. March 2009 - Located in Tønsberg, in Southern Norway, Stange Kylling is the leader in high-quality free-range chicken products, boasting no use of additives or growth stimulators.
Distributed mostly to retail (90%) and restaurants, products include whole birds, drumsticks, breasts, roasts of drumstick (70%), as well as ducks, turkeys and wild lamb (30%). Stanges main activities are manual processing, packaging and distribution. Manual cutting operations mean that several sets of eyes check product quality before distribution.
Stange is a small company highly focused on top quality. The company achieves a production volume of around 4,500 chickens per week and 4,000 wild lambs per year in its one plant. The lambs live on small islands eating only natural feed such as seaweed which gives the meat a special flavour.
Stange distribute their products to retail and restaurants in Oslo daily, five days a week – the only supplier offering this service. They hardly advertise because their products speak for themselves. The name of Stange Kylling is often used as a reference in recipes and the company benefits from a considerable amount of press coverage.
Future plans include new product development such as marinated products or new cuts, and displaying the name of the breeding farm on the pack. In November 2008 Stange began producing chicken stock and soups from left-over chicken bones.
FIRST CLASS PACKAGING FOR TOP QUALITY PRODUCT
About five years ago, new owners took over Stange Kylling and modernized the plant. They developed a new, simple, more elegant logo. The opportunity was also seized to significantly upgrade the packaging. Darfresh materials from Sealed Air were chosen for their first-class performance and perfect match to the elegant, premium Stange brand.
By 2006-2007 Stange switched from rollstock pouches to the following vacuum shrink packaging system: Darfresh printed bottom web and Darfresh printed top web running on a Multivac R272 CD machine, along with printed Cryovac OSB3050 bags.
Darfresh Vacuum Skin Packaging by Sealed Air has been long associated with high perceived value in food retailing. This packaging ensures enhanced communication and merchandising appeal, together with extended shelf life of 14 days and top quality preservation. Other benefits include improved logistics with full packaging automation, reduced cost per pack as a result of fewer rejects, traceability, improved food quality and safety, unprecedented differentiation on retail shelves, pack integrity and drip loss thanks to hermetic seals, vertical display, food hygiene and security.
SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS
The new packaging resolves a number of problems. Juice migration was eliminated thanks to the skin tight surface. Excellent and total visibility showcases the product and its high quality, the pack being a perfect match. “The Cryovac packaging materials clearly boost our products on supermarket shelves resulting in increased sales to retail”, said Peter Aronsen, sales manager.
OPTIMAL RESULTS
The new Stange products are very well received by both retailers and consumers. The products are now selling well at high profiled Norwegian retail chains such as Meny, Centra, Ultra, ICA, Maxi, Coop Mega. These results have been very pleasing for retail chains, supporting the trend of increased white meat consumption in Norway (from 14kg to 17kg per capita in recent years).
“The products speak for themselves. The elegant product pack shows that they are high quality products – in other words, these are niche products in a luxury pack”, concluded Peter Aronsen, sales manager.