“Light-weighting” is a term packagers are using to describe new packages that use less or different material to reduce weight, and by extension, transportation costs.

It’s a popular topic on the Pack Expo show floor, with Ampac Flexibles offering an example of how it works in lawn-care products.

Foster Turf Products approached Ampac to create a 24-g flexible pouch for Foster Patch Perfect coated grass seed that provides a 98% weight reduction from the brand’s previous 1,400-g HDPE rigid container. In the process, Foster reduced the total packaging components from five to one.

From a marketing perspective, the pouch provides consumers with die-cut, easy-carry handle and a bigger billboard, with gloss to enhance graphic impact.

Sal Pellingra, Ampac Flexibles innovation and marketing director, says 230 of the empty pouches can be stored or shipped in the same amount of space that would accommodate 12 of the rigid containers.

In addition, a 10,000-unit shipment of empty rigid containers (in 12-count cartons) would require 834 shipping cartons. The same quantity shipment of pouches would require 45 of the same-same size cartons. A 10,000-unit shipment of empty rigid containers would weigh about six times more than the same quantity shipment of pouches.