When the objective is distinguishing the new premium line from a brand’s “workhorse” line, special colors may be appropriate. However, they can bring unforeseen challenges.

Procter & Gamble marketers wanted to extend the Folgers brand into premium coffees under the Coffeehouse Series name, and took its AromaSeal plastic container to new innovative heights by changing how color is used in the canister wall. The selected canister color was a deep red/burgundy with a soft pearlescent effect, and a gold lid. These colors differentiate the Coffeehouse Series line from everyday Folgers coffees’ red and green canisters.

Achieving the desired look, however, presented a formidable challenge. Design firm LPK, Clariant Masterbatches’ ColorWorks center, and Liquid Container Corp. solved it collectively by concentrating on color physics rather than color chemistry, drawing inspiration from personal-care packaging.

“This was an excellent example of collaboration,” says Gerard Buisson, Principal Packaging Engineer for Folgers on the Coffeehouse Series canisters.

Initial canister samples for the Coffeehouse Series line lacked luster and reflectivity, says Andrew Tesnar, LPK Senior Design Director. LPK recalled the successful redesign of P&G’s Olay Quench line of personal care packaging and contacted Clariant’s ColorWorks center, where the Olay bottles had been developed.

Meanwhile, Clariant found the right equipment at Liquid Container to achieve the visual effects that Folgers desired for the canister.

“They were running multilayer blowmolding machines with separate extruders feeding one multilayer die,” explains Len Kulka, Clariant ColorWorks Director of Creative Development and Packaging. “This meant that we could try techniques that we’ve used very successfully on cosmetics and personal-care packaging to develop containers with incredible depth and reflectivity.”

The package development team also determined why achieving the right look in the new canisters had been difficult. The red and green AromaSeal canisters are multilayer, blow-molded structures with production trim scrap sandwiched between outer and inner layers of virgin material. Both virgin layers are HDPE and have the same color formulation. Unsuccessful early attempts to create the new color for the Coffeehouse Series had followed the same multilayer construction approach.

But Kulka determined that so much color was being applied to the virgin layers for the premium Folgers containers, in order to build opacity, that the color volume compromised the pearlescent additives’ gloss and reflectivity.
So a multilayer color system was developed from the ground up, rather than as a monocolor system.

In a multilayer color system, the color function of each canister layer is based on the desired visual characteristics. Color in one layer addresses the need for reflectivity, brightness, and light transmission. Another layer provides mass tone color with high opacity. Trim scrap in the middle layer combines the functionality of the outer and inner layers.