Westmill Foods is one of Europe’s largest specialist food companies, manufacturer and supplier of authentic ethnic food. With a passion to deliver superior products and experiences, their product range includes high quality rice, spices, sauces, edible oils, flour and noodles. Their brands, including Patak’s, Elephant Atta and Rajah, are respected for quality and authenticity, and are to be found in the best professional and home kitchens.

Westmill’s Rajah brand sits in the category of South Asian Spice Blends, where packaging is ordinarily presented as a foil bag inside an outer box. The consumer would open the box and snip a corner of the inner bag in order to tip out the contents. Following large scale consumer research, Westmill identified that consumers primarily desired a modern and premium look and feel to their packaging that would stand up on shelf and provide a resealable element. The research also indicated that the ability to view the product influenced decision making.

As a result of the research, Westmill Foods made the decision to significantly change their packaging from a pillow pack format to a resealable stand up pouch and were the first company within this category to make such a bold move.

Westmill Foods chose to work with Northamptonshire based FFP Packaging Solutions as their packaging partner as they were looking for a company that could meet their exacting requirements for the new pack format, as well as a business that would provide support and expertise in the colour management process to ensure the integrity of the brand was maintained across their many designs within the range.

Jon Somers, brand manager for Rajah commented “We chose to work with FFP as their company values are very much aligned to ours and finding a partner that could assist us in maintaining our brand identity and consistency across the range was paramount.” He continues, “we were delighted with the level of support that the team at FFP provided. With fully printed trials we were able to launch a pack that satisfied both ours and the consumers desires and lead the way in innovation within the category”.

FFP worked closely with Westmill Food’s branding, marketing and production teams to develop a pack that offered all of the features they were looking for and reflected the values that consumers had indicated influenced their decision making process. The substrate chosen was a PET laminated to EVOH PE to provide the high barrier required. A clear window was incorporated into the pouch to give the premium finish that Westmill Foods desired and to provide product visibility.

FFP is one of very few converters that can offer a complete in house solution from concept to production. With over 50 years of industry experience, great pride is taken in the ability to support brand owners throughout the entire process and ensure that their brand identity and integrity is maintained through colour management, flexographic printing and lamination capabilities.

FFP’s originations, and technical teams were heavily involved in the process, providing trials to find the right substrate to create the look and feel that Westmill Foods desired. The challenge set for FFP was to match through their flexographic printing process, a Lithographic wet proof that had been approved by Westmill branding as the target. Smart Colour separations were required to convert the lithographic proof into a flexo format that would be consistent across over 100 SKU’s. Once the colour reproduction had been achieved on a flexographic proof and approved they were ready to move to the next stage. The project then progressed to fully printed press trials including the various ‘matt finish’ options. With the support of FFP’s technical team the fully printed and laminated film was then thoroughly tested on Westmill’s new filling and pouch forming machine, to complete the project sign off.