food & beverage

Quest for perfection


Packaging & converting intelligence

• www.packaging-gateway.com

food & beverage

Danone is fuelling growth in its global brands by building a packaging strategy that nurtures bright ideas from inside and outside the company. Jim Banks talks to Gilles Ghnassia and Andy Roberts about how working more closely with partner suppliers is helping to achieve true sustainability.

For a company like Danone, owner of some of the most familiar global brands in the beverage and dairy food markets and showing rapid growth around the world, a powerful packaging strategy is key to the success of its many products. Through brands like Evian, Volvic, Activia and Actimel, the company is reaching into new markets to help fuel growth of 10% per annum. Not surprisingly, packaging suppliers want to work with Danone and, in turn, the company can look for those partners who are willing to work in a collaborative way towards long-term goals. One of these goals is sustainability in all its many forms. Danone looks at its packaging needs over a five-year time horizon to determine its global packaging strategy, which breaks down into specific priorities for the food and beverage markets. ‘In the beverage sector, there are real challenges, and among our priorities the absolute number one is improving our profile on sustainability,’ says Andy Roberts, Danone’s VP of Purchasing for the beverage market. ‘The key performance indicator we use for that is our carbon footprint, which is a well established priority.’

as working for our new division that produces baby food and medical nutrition,’ he says. ‘In the dairy sector, our research and development has been restructured around individual brands. The importance of the brand focus is that it means key suppliers play a major role. We rely on their R&D capability, too.’ Danone has integrated three suppliers – two for ingredients and one for packaging – into the top levels of consultancy on