Yoghurt giant finds squeeze pottle tasty

Paul Adams' CrushPak uses less plastic, providing big cost savings. Photo / Paul Estcourt

North Shore firm EverEdge IP is finding international success licensing plastic packaging technology to the world's biggest yoghurt maker which allows consumers to squeeze the product straight into their mouths.

The Takapuna company, which specialises in commercialising intellectual property, says it has signed its fourth contract with Paris-based dairy manufacturer Danone, which will see its CrushPak launched in Argentina and Canada, following earlier launches in Mexico, Spain and the United States.

EverEdge IP chief executive Paul Adams said the European firm would be shipping 500 million units annually of the New Zealand-developed packaging by the end of this year.

Danone reported sales of €17 billion ($28 billion) in 2010.

The packaging's design, strengthened by a series of indentations that act like building pillars, allows the CrushPak to be manufactured using 35 per cent less plastic than other types of packaging of the same volume, providing attractive cost savings for food manufacturers, Adams said.

The technology also gave consumers the option of either eating the product with a spoon, or squeezing it straight into their mouths, he said.

"Its popularity with consumers provides a strong market advantage."

The CrushPak has become a solid revenue earner for the North Shore firm, wholly owned by Adams.

"It's millions of dollars annually that we derive in terms of royalties," he said. "And the great thing about royalties is they're very high margin."

EverEdge began working on the CrushPak in 2005 when its Kiwi inventor approached the company.

Adams said the inventor - a "very private individual" who he declined to name - also collected royalties from Danone until EverEdge bought his rights to the technology for a "seven-figure" sum.

Adams said EverEdge, which was founded in 2003 and now has 16 staff, had secured additional licensing agreements for the CrushPak with other large-scale food manufacturers which he could not yet name.

"There are some pretty big markets and some pretty big players coming down the pipe," he said.

Adams said there was a huge amount of innovation going on in New Zealand, but very little was ever translated into real commercial success.

"The problem lies not in the quality of the ideas," he said.

"It lies in the way in which they are being commercialised.

"First of all, [New Zealanders] tend to spend too much time on the technology itself - there's too much tinkering in the shed and time in the lab ... rather than actually exposing [the innovation] to a commercial environment and getting feedback.

"The second thing is that we tend to have a fairly immature approach to intellectual property," he said.

"Patents are important to the process but the best way to think about them is they're just a tool."