Supplier Side

LiDestri Innovation Center offers retailers a private label ‘playground’

Fifteen months ago, Fairport, N.Y.-based LiDestri Food & Beverage opened its Innovation Center in its Rochester, N.Y., manufacturing facility. The center was created to offer new and existing customers a “playground” where food and beverage product ideas could be discussed, brought to life in small batches, tinkered with and turned into a saleable product in just a few weeks — or, in some cases, in just a few days. The Innovation Center offers customers a research and development lab with a benchtop kitchen; a pilot facility, where a product’s packaging can be tested in small batches; a panel of certified taste testers for beverages; and packaging design and branding assistance.

“Retailers are looking to create their own brands,” Stephanie LiDestri, chief marketing officer at LiDestri Food & Beverage, told Store Brands during a plant tour in October. “They want to be unique. That means we can’t just slap a label on something we’ve been mass-producing for years and sell it to them. We have to offer them the opportunity to be creative and to work with us designing something new.”

In addition to product development, LiDestri said it offers its customers packaging innovation — both with the packaging material and with the visual branding of the product. For example, LiDestri recently partnered with Tetra Pak to offer the only high-acid, ambient-fill aseptic beverage machinery lines in the United States. For customers interested in this technology, LiDestri is one of the few manufacturers that is able to offer access to the Tetra Pak Visualizer: a Tetra Pak software program that allows clients to see what their fully designed Tetra Pak packaging will look like in 3-D before it is created and run on any machinery.

LiDestri said it estimates that less than 10 percent of contract manufacturers are able to offer something similar to what its Innovation Center does.
— M. Escobar

Haso USA develops industry’s first fully dispersible flushable baby wipe

Haso USA, Tokyo, a manufacturer of private label wet and dry wipes for supermarket chains in the United States, said it created the industry’s first fully dispersible flushable baby wipe. The baby wipes are made from 100 percent tree pulp and do not contain plastics or artificial materials. The wipes use a patent-pending Rapid Dissolve Technology that allows them to begin dispersing within five seconds of being submerged in water.

Additionally, Haso told Store Brands that its wipes break into 1-inch pieces within five minutes, while the leading national brand of flushable wipes can take up to 50 minutes. However, consumer in-use strength and softness match or exceed that of the leading baby wipe, as confirmed through independent testing by United Laboratories.

Haso said its flushable baby wipe officially debuted at the 2014 Water Environment Federation’s Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC) in October 2014. During the conference, members of the nonwovens industry discussed the high number of non-flushable baby wipes collecting at wastewater treatment facilities, resulting in a rising incidence of damage to wastewater treatment equipment and a rapid increase in the cost of physical collection efforts. While baby wipes seem to be the primary culprit in clogging sewer systems, other wipes such as disinfecting wipes are increasingly flushed by consumers even though they are meant to be thrown out. Because of this behavior, Haso said it has gone on to apply its Rapid Dissolve Technology to an entire range of wipes: disinfecting wipes, moist toilet tissue, toddler wipes and bathroom wipes.
— M. Escobar