TetraPak

A consumer who buys cartons of milk regularly pays very little heed to the beverage packaging before consumption. In many ways, this trust highlights how far innovation has come in safeguarding everyday food products. While many organizations have contributed to these innovative strides, Tetra Pak has forged a legacy for greater sustainability and uncompromised quality in food packaging avenues. The organization’s continued effort to enhance safety while innovating with customers to uplift the quality of packaged consumable food items delivered worldwide has refined the industry’s standards.

“Our story begins with a promise. A promise we’ve carried with us since the beginning - PROTECTS WHAT’S GOOD, thereby protecting food, people, and the planet,” begins Manuel Calderon, Cluster Leader of Marketing, APAC, Tetra Pak. “Every decision we make starts with this principle, and it is also the reason why we continue to push ourselves and innovate alongside our customers to realize our vision and commit to making food safe and available everywhere.

Tetra Pak upholds the tenet, ‘A package should save more than it costs,’ as coined by its Founder Dr. Ruben Rausing, to keep the consumption of raw materials and energy during the manufacturing and distribution phases at the lowest levels. By following the principles of reducing, renew, and recycling across all of its product lines, Tetra Pak minimizes food packaging products’ impact on the environment.

Rising to the Occasion

The food and beverages industry—one of the severely affected sectors worldwide from the aftermath of COVID-19—continues to recover from the adversities caused by the pandemic. As people are self-isolated themselves, the fear of losing connection with the society heightened, causing disruptions to the global supply chain in terms of safety and uncertainty. At this juncture, Tetra Pak fortified its supply chain to provide uninterrupted food supplies around the world, ensuring the highest measures of safety through its aseptic technology, particularly for regions with refrigeration and transportation challenges. The company coordinates with local regulatory authorities regularly to ensure personnel and transport vehicles’ safety during this crisis. Most importantly, the 25,000+ Tera Pak employees work closely to ensure our promise and commitment to food safety and customer-centricity.

“We are an innovator and continuously deliver on consumers and customers ever-changing trends and demands – health & wellness, premium-isation, convenience, and connectivity.

We live and breathe sustainability, with our package being 70% from a renewable source,” adds Calderon.

A Culture of Sustainability

In addition to crafting an integrated solutions portfolio, Tetra Pak has created a suite of connectivity functions, industry 4.0 and outcome-based solutions (OEE, OCG), and traceability functions in the food and material value chain, all of which serve as a foundation to its sustainability venture – providing food to every part of the world, without compromising on safety or quality. Tetra Pak also strives to reduce the climate impact of its offerings and manufacturing operations in close association and cooperation with customers, suppliers, and other critical stakeholders in the value chain. It creates a circular economy with waste minimalization to drive newer opportunities and improve recyclability in practice and worldwide. Along similar lines, the company ensures responsible sourcing and use of renewable materials to protect biodiversity, sustainable forestry, and natural resources to foster biodiversity and accountable material sourcing avenues.

“For Tetra Pak’s people, we continuously strive to protect the health and safety of people everywhere. Through our global know-how and in close collaboration with our many suppliers and partners, we seek to enrich the lives and economies of the communities where we operate. We encourage everyone in our company to take responsibility. After all, it’s our combined expertise and dedication that makes us who we are – a diverse and inclusive place to work, where each of us helps to protect what’s good. We relentlessly strive to be a force for good in society, continuously contributing to communities and developing opportunities for positive change,” explains Calderon.

Diversity and inclusion form the muscles and veins of Tetra Pak’s workforce, evidenced and valued for the benefits such a culture continually brings to any business. The company invests both time and resources in its employees’ physical, mental, and professional well-being, nurturing an environment that derives the best out of each. This breeds effective collaborations inside and outside the industry, addressing both business and societal challenges faced by clients, customers, and other stakeholders in the value chain.

The Promise of Quality

Tetra Pak has evolved into one of the most prominent organizations of end-to-end solutions, which introduces state-of-the-art technologies, equipment, and comprehensive value-added services into local markets. These integrated solutions, coupled with Tetra Pak’s decades worth of experience and expertise, address both quality and operational efficiency requirements, helping customers succeed in dairy and plant-based categories; it has excelled at aseptic technology to uphold uncompromised standards of quality.

More importantly, Tetra Pak works closely with its customers, understanding their needs and necessities. To that end, Calderon emphasizes that the company retains a consumer-facing business posture, despite functioning similar to a B2B organization. “We work with our food manufacturers to understand what the needs and preferences are of the end consumers. And, even though we operate as a B2B company that serves food manufacturers, we present ourselves as a B2B2C company that understands the requirements of consumers and makes necessary technological upgradations to support continued innovation,” adds Calderon.

Tetra Pak’s recent collaboration (a customer that the company works closely with) stands as a testament to its customer-centric mindset. Evidently, the continued to push for a higher, more premium food& beverages as innovation drove food processing industry. Tetra Pak designed an end-to-end solution to address this need, thereby incorporating a new technology to process milk, utilizing higher quality raw materials in the mix and sophisticated food processing technology to deliver higher protein content in the milk, drastically overhauling the premium market segment’s packaging format. This ‘super-premium’ category includes preserving milk with long shelf life without preservatives– a prevalent and sought-after segment within the industry. The collaboration also combined the mobility and logistical requirements into one packaging product, creating a product that is not just premium but also had a stable shelf life, better quality, sustainable, and redefined packaging format and processing methodologies. “Our technology gives us the confidence and resilience to improve our operation efficiency, as global supply chains are disrupted regularly with innovation,” substantiates Calderon. Such a diversified technological portfolio also allows the company to navigate uncharted territories and catered to clients’ discrete requirements and end consumers.

In tandem with its technological competencies, these efforts bolster Tetra Pak’s value proposition of improving the accessibility of packaged consumables. The steps also indicate how well the company has remained true to its promise of delivering end-to-end packaging solutions, which save more than it costs to manufacture. “Our company was founded on the idea that a package should save more than it costs. Armed with this mindset today, our ambition is that our commitments, solutions, and partnerships help protect our planet by leaving a positive impact on our climate and resources. We are committed to reduce the environmental footprint of our products and services and consistently pursue and initiate collective actions that will help create a sustainable tomorrow without compromising food safety or quality,” concludes Calderon.