TETRA PAK

www.tetrapak.com

I like Ruben Rausing. He seems like a cool guy. Studying economics in the 20s and seeing the coming changes in society caused by industrialisation and urbanisation and the problems of feeding a crowded city:

Ruben Rausing started to build up a packaging industry, which considerably contributed to the restructuring of Swedish retailing, a modernisation, which led to self-service, convenience shopping and supermarkets. A primary objective was to replace bulk selling of unpacked goods with consumer adapted packaging for flour, sugar and salt. Another product, which was both perishable and demanded a lot of management, was milk. How could bulk milk and the unpractical glass bottle be replaced?

Rausing's idea, inspired by his wife, was to create a continuous paper cylinder filled with milk which was then sealed, eliminating trapped air and improving shelf life. Think of those sausage machines, where the filling is fed into the casing continuously and sealed at fixed intervals. Think of that, but milky:



The original Tetra Paks were tetrahedral in shape, which I guess is where the name comes from, and looked quite neat:



Now, Tetra Pak offer nine different packaging forms:



Left to right:

• Tetra Recart "Beef stew, or macaroni cheese? Now you can pack food you would normally pack in cans or glass jars in the environmentally friendly Tetra Recart"
• Tetra Fino Aseptic "The no-nonsense package specially designed to pack all kinds of milk, juice and teas"
• Tetra Rex "Probably the world's most popular and widespread carton package"
• Tetra Gemina Aseptic "Combines modern, eye-catching looks and a fresh image with the convenience, safety and nutritional benefits of aseptic packaging"
• Tetra Wedge Aseptic "A great way for young people to express their personality through what they drink"
• Tetra Prisma Aseptic "A premium package that's ideal for high quality fruit juices, flavoured enriched and cultured milks, iced teas and organic products"
• Tetra Brik Aseptic "Easy to store, safe and hygenic" (A non-aseptic version for chilled products is also available)
• Tetra Top "The package that adds real shelf confidence to your products"
• Tetra Classic Aseptic "Stands out from the packaging crowd"

The machines used to process and fill these cartons are very impressive. Look at this:



Who could have imagined a machine as huge as that would be simple enough to be operated by a woman?

I love watching footage of industrial production lines.



The clips here are beautiful too. I especially like the last clip ("Paketering i Tetra, Brik och Pure Pak, ca 1965") with that jolly little background music which about halfway through sounds like it's about to mutate into the instrumental version of (I've Got A) Golden Ticket used over the titles of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Think of that, but milky.

THE GROCER

www.thegrocer.co.uk

Oh my. I think I'm addicted. Seriously. Every week for the last two months or so, I've bought The Grocer. I can't explain why. It makes no sense. It's a trade magazine for food and drink retailers, I work for a DVD distribution company. I should be reading Media Week, or Broadcast, or something like that. Not this. But if I see a headline like "AS MANY AS 50% OF ASDA'S 5,000 NEW ROLLBACKS OFFER JUST A 1p SAVING" or "WHY APPLE PRICES ARE DOWN 20% YEAR-ON-YEAR", sorry, but I've got to buy that magazine.

The current issue is especially good. They do special pull-out guides once a month I guess (the last one was about hot beverages). In this issue, there's a guide to confectionery. It's got Mr T on the front. Mr T says:

Listen up suckers, did you know:

• MARS is the No.1 manufacturer in sales of 'hunger' lines with 59% value share
  
• The hunger category is big and growing
  
• 'Hunger' is the 2nd largest needstate with sales of over £250m
  
• Multifacings of the best sellers (eg Mars, Snickers, Twix) will deliver more sales than 1 facing of a slower seller

I didn't know any of that, Mr T. Well, possibly the last one.

To be honest, I never realised how knowledgable Mr T was when it comes to this sort of thing. You've got to admire the way he has all these figures at his bejwelled fingertips.

The Grocer's Guide To Confectionery contains what is without doubt the clunkiest, clumsiest, most desperate, most awkward linking paragraph I have ever read in my life. Let me set the scene. Talking about Nestlé's advertising proposals for the coming year, journalist David Burrows then seeks a way to link that to the new Mikado product recently launched in the UK by Kraft. This is how he does it:

It's been another impressive year for KitKat with sales up over 30% to £94m. Buyers suggest Nestlé has "got its house in order" with the brand now, having improved the focus. The launch of KitKat Senses, fronted by the Girls Aloud babes, has also given the brand that Something Kinda Oooooh.

Britain's most popular girl brand was, of course, discovered on TV show "Popstars: The Rivals". And now, "their biscuit" could have a rival, of sorts, on the confectionery shelves with Kraft foods having just launched a "unique chocolate biscuit snack specifically designed for on-the-go customers".

Christ. I'm not claiming the rubbish I write on this bloody blog is any better, but, you know, I'm doing this for free. Fuck knows why.

The same article also contains sentence which, well, I wouldn't want to suggest it's a deliberate lie, so maybe it's better just to say it demonstrates a slightly absurd overconfidence in the accuracy of their figures:

Nestlé has promised £7m to its Aero brand and treble that for KitKat. In fact, shoppers are unlikely to have a break from advertising for the iconic brand with the series of "Perfect Break" ads set to be seen by 99.9% of the target audience 53 times in 2009.

How on earth can it be possible to make a statement with that degree of accuracy?

And then, within this very same article, there's a spectacularly inane comment from Craig Barker, sales director at Ferrero:

Boxed chocolate remains a strong category despite tough economic times. The amount of disposable income may diminish, but key gifting occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's and Easter will continue, as will the propensity of the consumer to gift at these key times.

Brilliant. He's basically saying "there are still times when people will give chocolates to other people as presents and at these times when people will give chocolates to other people as presents, they will give chocolates as presents". Thanks for that, Craig.

Anyway, despite all this, and even only looking at the confectionery guide, I like learning all the specialist phrases used in industries like this. The "hunger" "needstate". "Multi-facings". "Impulse sub-section". "Pouch format". "Large-block"

Possibly The Grocer doesn't really qualify for this blog. It's a trade magazine, not a trade association, and their website doesn't offer much more than the print version so it's not like I'm concentrating on that either. But, so what? It's my blog. I can write what I want.

BRITISH EGG INFORMATION SERVICE

http://www.britegg.co.uk/

For over thirty years, health organisations have warned that people should limit the number of eggs they eat to only three week . However, this limit has now been lifted! As Professor Bruce Griffin, Professor of Nutritional Metabolism from the University of Surrey, says "The UK public do not need to be limiting the number of eggs they eat" Fantastic news! Eggs all round! Let's party! These eggs certainly seem pleased by the news.

I'm sure that following this great news, you are, like me, now planning an all egg diet. If so, you'd probably want some ideas for recipes. The British Egg Information Service has lots of recipes. They've also got a Youtube channel.
This is how to boil an egg:



That's fairly straightforward. I think most people agree on how to boil an egg, though I suppose there's a bit of debate over whether you should put the egg in cold water and bring to the boil or boil the water first and then add the egg. That's nothing compared with the number of different ways to poach an egg. This is the British Egg Information Service's method. She uses the rolling boil/egg in a cup method. Gordon Ramsay has a similar method but uses a whisk to "gain some momentum in the water". He also plunges his cooked egg into iced water. Isn't it a bit gross the way he holds the poached egg at the end? I keep thinking he's going to squeeze it and spray egg yolk all over his craggy, antique oak face. It seems wrong holding a poached egg like that. Rob Manuel from B3TA tested various egg poaching methods and having tried the clingfilm method, I agree with his findings.

But what if you're just too lazy to boil or poach an egg and don't really fancy Bowie-in-Berlin style raw eggs? Thankfully, the British Egg Products Association are on hand.

Egg products are used as ingredients by food manufacturers and caterers to save time, money and hassle, without neglecting quality or food safety responsibilities. There are an incredible amount of egg products available on the market today, if you can think of a way for egg to be sold then it probably exists. Eggs are available in liquid, frozen and dried forms. Also available are "value added" egg products such as boiled eggs, scotch eggs, fried eggs and omelettes and ready-to-use scrambled eggs and sandwich fillings.

Ready made fried eggs! Brilliant!

Unfortunately, egg products seem to be mainly aimed at food manufacturers and caterers rather than the end consumer and so aren't available in supermarkets. Although Sainsburys sell packs of shelled hard boiled eggs for just £1.99 for four. That's handy, because I'm sure there must have been lots of times in the past when you've been out and about, doing the shopping or going to meet friends or whatever and you fancied eating four hard boiled eggs, but couldn't so you just had to starve. Well, no longer! And you can wash it all down with a lovely carton of egg white from Eggnation.

I wrote all that without making a single egg pun.

PIZZA PASTA AND ITALIAN FOOD ASSOCIATION

http://www.papa.org.uk/

Welcome to papa.org.uk home of the Pizza, Pasta and Italian Food Association (PAPA).

Hold on. How did they get to PAPA? Pizza, Pasta and Italian Food Association - shouldn't that be PPIFA? Pizza, Pasta and Italian Food Association, surely. PPIFA. Not Pizza, Pasta and Italian Food Association.

The Pizza, Pasta & Italian Food Association (PAPA) was originally formed in 1977 as the Pizza Association, but changed its name to include pasta and Italian foods in the late 1980s. Today the association is the only formal trade body in the UK representing the broad pizza, pasta and Italian food and drink industry

OK, I can accept the Pizza Association calling itself PA. That's fine. Pizza Association. No problem. But if you then stick "Pasta and Italian Food" in between "Pizza" and "Association", you need to put PIF between the P and A. You can't just add another PA on the end. It doesn't work like that.

Anyway, unfortunately, lots of the links in the information centre are only available to PPIFA members. I'd be interested to read the code of practice for home delivery operators and drivers. Non-PPIFA members at least can read the fun pizza facts:

American Pizza Consumption
Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza EACH DAY, or about 350 slices per second. Each individual consumes about 23 lbs., or 46 slices, each year. Around 350 pizza slices are wolfed down across the States each second.

Apparently, each second, Americans eat around 350 slices of pizza. Around 350 slices of pizza are eaten by Americans every second.

Favourite Toppings
Americans prefer meat toppings to veggie toppings by a ratio of 62 to 100. Women order twice as many vegetable toppings than men.
America's favourite topping is pepperoni. 36 per cent of all pizza customers want their pizzas topped with pepperoni. US citizens consume around 251,770,000 pounds of pepperonis every year.

Least Favourite
The least favourite pizza topping is anchovies.

I like pepperoni and I like anchovies. I straddle the pizza divide. If there were more people like me, there'd be no war.

There's more to Italian food than just pizza though. The country is famous for its food. Thankfully, the PPIFA have a recipe page, so you can make some tasty traditional Italian food at home. Unfortunately, there's only one recipe so far. For a pizza omelette, which is an omelette with some pizza toppings:

Classic Toppings
Farmhouse - ham and mushroom. Hawaiian - ham and pineapple.
Vegetarian - green peppers, red onion, tomato, pineapple, mushroom and sweetcorn. Or something a bit more special
Meat feast - pepperoni, chicken, spicy beef, spicy pork and Cajun chicken.
Capricciosa - ham, roasted peppers, white anchovies, capers and olives.
Florentina – goat’s cheese, spinach and olives.

Is "meat feast" really a classic Italian pizza topping?

POTATO COUNCIL

www.potato.org.uk
www.britishpotatoes.co.uk
www.potatoesforcaterers.co.uk
www.potatoesforschools.org.uk
www.lovechips.co.uk
www.potatoposters.co.uk

One potato, two potato, three potato, four, five potato, six potato. Six potato websites. The Potato Council have got six different websites. Six official potato websites.

In the current issue of The Grocer, there's a story with the headline POTATO INDUSTRY 'MUST PULL IN YOUNG PEOPLE' based on a report, due to be published by the Potato Council next month, called "Potatoes - A Choice For Life". Apparently, younger consumers are turning to rice and pasta, rather than potatoes, as their main source of carbohydrate:

Consumption under-indexed significantly among younger age groups and was highest among the retired, according to the report. Only 63% of individuals in the "pre-family" demographic ate potatoes as their carbohydrate of choice, compared with 21% for pasta and 16% for rice. However, 86% of the retired consumed potatoes as their carbohydrate of choice.

I didn't know everyone was meant to have a carbohydrate of choice. Do you have to have one? I guess mine would be potatoes, but I don't know, now I feel pressured. What if I choose the wrong carbohydrate of choice? If I pick potatoes, what does that say about me? I'm in the pre-family demographic, does choosing potatoes make me uncool? Pasta and rice seem edgier choices.

According to the Potato Council, "time, convenience and money" are the reasons people are choosing rice and pasta instead of potatoes. As Kathryn Race of the Potato Council explains, “for generations, family meals have included potato favourites such as Shepherd’s Pie and fishcakes. But our research reveals that the younger generation are now unable to make a meal using one of the most important staples – the potato, without being shown how":

When asked which they would know how to cook from scratch:

• only 65 per cent of 19-21 year olds, 65 per cent of 22-25 year olds and 67 per cent of 26-30 year olds know how to cook roast potatoes


• just 66 per cent of 19-21 year olds, 69 per cent of 22-25 year olds and 66 per cent of 26-30 year olds know how to cook jacket potatoes

What? How can anyone not know how to cook a jacket potato? Isn't the recipe just "put potato in oven"?

When asked which dishes they would know how to cook from scratch without help/guidance:

• only 17 per cent of 19-21 year olds, 25 per cent of 22-25 year olds and 22 per cent of 26-30 year olds know how to cook fishcakes


• just 14 per cent of 19-21 year olds, 22 per cent of 22-25 year olds and 20 per cent of 26-30 year olds know how to cook Potato Gratin/Bake


• just 22 per cent of 19-21 year olds, 24 per cent of 22-25 year olds and 28 per cent of 26-30 year olds know how to cook Leek and Potato Soup


• just 38 per cent of 19-21 year olds, 46 per cent of 22-25 year olds and 48 per cent of 26-30 year olds know how to cook Shepherd’s Pie.

I'm not entirely sure if I could make all those dishes without any help or guidance. I could probably produce something which would be edible, but I wouldn't be entirely sure of quantities and cooking times. But why do you need to be able to cook leek and potato soup without any help or guidance? Google exists. BBC Recipe Search exists. There's no shame in checking how to make something if you've never made it before. And I doubt I'd ever make fishcakes from scratch anyway. To make fishcakes, the first stage is to make mash and if I've made mash, I'd probably just eat the mash. Leave me alone, Potato Council. I'm happy to eat mash. Isn't that enough for you?

I love mash. Mash is one of the best things you can make with potatoes. Chips are good too. I lovechips. How many people do you think the Potato Council approached to front their Love Chips campaign before finally admitting defeat and asking Keith Chegwin?

This is just mental:



Fennell19900's comment is a bit harsh:

This really isnt catching on the way he hoped would boost his career. Probly cos the song is SHIT

Harsh but fair.

UK TEA COUNCIL

http://www.tea.co.uk/

I like tea. Everyone likes tea, surely? The Google results speak for themselves:

"I love tea" - 134,000 results
"I like tea" - 69,800 results
"I am largely indifferent to tea" - 0 results
"I don't like tea" - 23,100 results
"I hate tea" - 13,300 results

Google results checked at 13.22, 05/02/2009

Proven by science. Not only is the group of people who love tea by far the biggest of all the groups, but even amongst those who feel negatively towards tea, more people merely "don't like" it rather than actively "hate" it.



www.tea.co.uk. The UK Tea Council did well with the URL there. Even better than the British Sandwich Association.

Tea. Tea, tea, tea. The front page of the UK Tea Council website uses the word "tea" forty one times:



That's a lot. Especially when you realise they only use the word "the" twenty times:



The conduplicating text almost removes all meaning from the word "tea" turning it into nothing more than an echolalic tic. Tea. TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA. Tea.

Tea Facts! Tea FAQs!

96% of all cups of tea drunk daily in the UK are brewed from tea bags!
98% of people take their tea with milk, but only 30% take sugar in tea!
The British drink 165 million cup of tea a day! 60.2 billion per year!

Cor, the tea bag was invented by accident!

In around 1908, Thomas Sullivan, a New York tea merchant, started to send samples of tea to his customers in small silken bags. Some assumed that these were supposed to be used in the same way as the metal infusers, by putting the entire bag into the pot, rather than emptying out the contents.

Excellent, well done confused American customers of Thomas Sullivan in around 1908!

If you want to learn more about tea, there's a one-day masterclass which is only £175 (book here). Or you can spend hours looking at the UK Tea Council website for free.

The UK Tea Council website is a little bit insane. There are tea related games, a spinning tea pot thing you can use to decide whose turn it is to make the tea and a chart you can download to keep note of how colleagues take their tea. They also got Dr Rebecca Newton from the London School of Economics to analyse how people hold their tea cups and identify six different personality types. I suspect the UK Tea Council is the greatest place to work in the world. Everyone must just sit around all day, drinking tea and thinking of idiotic tea-related gimmicks. They haven't done tea-shirts yet though. Maybe I'll suggest it to them and they'll give me a job, or at invite me round for a cup of tea.

BRITISH SANDWICH ASSOCIATION

www.sandwich.org.uk

There's some back story as to why I looked at this website originally which I won't go into here, mainly because it's of no interest to anyone, but I'm going to start this pointless trade associations blog project with the British Sandwich Association because it has many of the key qualities of a good trade association website and it was while I was looking at it that I realised how much I like these sites.

Firstly, the URL is nice and basic. www.sandwich.org.uk. Excellent. Also, the site itself is really simple and slightly unattractive. This is good. Flash animations have no place on a trade website, you just want to be able to access the information quickly and easily.



I like the advert on the side there. Where better for The Sauce Company to advertise than on the website for the British Sandwich Association? Surely a large proportion of all the mayonnaise eaten in the UK is eaten in sandwiches.

There are British Sandwich Association awards! The Sammies! Who knew? Why aren't these awards better publicised? I eat sandwiches almost every day, but I watch maybe only one film a week, yet the Oscars get much more coverage than the Sammies. It's wrong. The Sammies should be on BBC1. Everyone likes sandwiches, surely. Millions of people would tune in. Come on BBC.

And look, there's a British Sandwich Association magazine! The International Sandwich & Snack News. This is what's in the current issue:

BSA
Sandwich Designer of the Year: It's time to get your design hats on again, with the top award up for grabs
The Sammies awards might seem some way off, but now's the time to put your hat in the ring or nominate someone else

PROFILES
The sandwich world has a new designer star in the shape of Hain Celestial's Jay Gosh. Simon Ambrose went to meet him.
Apostrophe is one of London's fast-growing sandwich stars with sixteen stores, the latest in the new Westfield complex in Shepherd's Bush. But is its reputation for excellence deserved? Nellie Nichols goes along to find out

INDEPENDENT PROFILES
Reynolds sandwich bar and café works closely with its suppliers, including running trials and offering its store as a sampling facility
Single-minded Victoria Pike always wanted to run her own sandwich bar and spent years working for other companies to achieve her objective. It's a story of dedication and training

SANDWICH RESEARCH
Saturation, what saturation? Jeffrey Young, Alegra Strategies' founder, says there's in the region of five years more expansion still to come for sandwich bars and cafés

I like the phrase "sandwich research".

The British Sandwich Association has a mission. And they stated what their mission is in their mission statement:

As the voice of the British sandwich industry, the primary objectives of The British Sandwich Association are:

SAFETY - To safeguard the integrity of the sandwich market by setting standards for sandwich making, by encouraging excellence in sandwich making and by encouraging the development of the industry in terms of skills, innovation and overall market development.
GROWTH - To encourage positive growth both in the market and the Association both through the development of the organisation and by promoting the consumption of sandwiches.
COMMUNICATION - To represent the interests of the industry and members to Government and all those in a position influence the industry or factors affecting the industry.
SUPPORT - To provide a source of support and information for members

I wonder how they promote the consumption of sandwiches. I haven't seen any adverts for sandwiches on TV.

EAT SANDWICHES YOU BASTARDS.

That would be a good slogan. If any representatives from the BSA are reading this, you're welcome to use that slogan.

There's also an information centre with lots of information about sandwiches. Unfortunately, most of it is restricted only to members of the BSA, so I have no idea what the management committee have to say, but you can see all the people who have won a Sammie since the awards began in 1995 which is handy seeing as the BBC website is no use.

There are also some very interesting insights into the sandwich market. Some of which, it is promised, will make your mouth water.

It is also estimated that the lunchbox market (that’s sandwiches made at home but carried out to be consumed at work or school etc.) represent around 24% of all sandwiches. It is believed that around 74% of all lunch boxes contain a sandwich.

What could possibly be in the remaining 26% of lunchboxes?


This article by Jane Baynton is fascinating.

Automatic bread feeders, bread buttering and spray buttering machines, sonic cutters, flow wrappers, multivacs, thermoformers and automatic labellers have all become common place. In very recent years we have seen the creation of the fully automated line. Who could ever have envisaged sandwiches being made by robots?

Who indeed.

Sonic cutters sound exciting don't they? They look impressive too:



You can buy them from a company called Millitec, although the website doesn't say how much they cost. I'm guessing they're probably quite expensive. The Ultra-cut can slice up to sixty sandwiches in a minute. That's probably faster than I need to slice sandwiches to be honest as I normally only make one sandwich at a time.

You can also get a butterer and a butterbox. I'm not entirely sure what a butterbox is. Obviously, it's something to do with buttering bread, but quite how you use it is a mystery. This is what a butterbox looks like:



Those cogs on the side look pleasingly functional.

Millitec's new Butterbox is the first truly hygienic way to mechanically butter. The unique design maintains the proven concept of mechanical buttering but completely eliminates the terrible food traps associated with traditional butterers. The same Butterbox will fit most manufacturer's machines with mountings for AFT, Rutland Handling and their clones. The minimal part count enables simple strip down and build up for hygiene with no scope for incorrect assembly. Improved seal technology reduces leakage from the box and large integrated bearing surfaces eliminate the need for frequent bush change. Food traps on the box and rollers are completely eliminated by manufacturing as single piece solid units. The box can be supplied with a jacketed induction heater hopper, allowing controlled localised warming of the butter with no electrical connections at all.

I don't know what any of that means.

Look at this too:



It can slice up to two and a half thousand kilograms of tomatoes in a single day. Incredible. I don't even know what two and a half thousand kilograms of tomatoes looks like. How many tomatoes is that? How much does a single tomato weigh? I don't know. Brilliant.