Big ideas for little meals

The baby food sector is an unusual one. Hygiene is even more vital than in regular food packaging and the organic movement is gaining ground quicker than in any other sector. Portion sizes must be strictly controlled and there is a constant stream of newcomers to the category, whose children grow out of the products within a few years. Brands that don’t have a presence outside the baby food aisle have to continually introduce themselves to new parents, who are bombarded with advice and government guidelines on how best to raise and feed their children. These parents are also likely to be short of time and sleep, so prepared baby foods must combine convenience with a promise of the best quality ingredients.

Many of the major brands use an on-pack checklist with a series of ticks to reassure parents that the thinking has been done for them. Cow & Gate has the ‘Baby balance’ promise, Organix the ‘No junk promise’ and Heinz launched the ‘It’s all good’ range in July. Partly due to strict EU rules on quantities of pesticide residue in baby foods, many brands in the sector are organic – such as Organix, Hipp Organic, Plum Baby and Ella’s Kitchen – and are keen to promote this on their packaging.

There are also tiers within the baby food market to reflect the stages of a baby’s digestive development and photos of babies are often used to indicate the age a food is aimed at. Cheltenham-based FLB works on the packaging for a host of Cow & Gate baby foods. You have to be careful that you get the age of the child on the pack right. In research, we found that if you show mums of six-month-old babies a yoghurt with a three-year-old on, the child looks so much older than their baby that they can’t imagine it being the right food for them, says Curtis.

Making a stand
With so much to fit on pack in terms of graphics, it is often the format that distinguishes between brands. Traditionally, prepared wet baby foods were sold in glass jars. In September, Cow & Gate added pasta sauces in stand-up pouches to its offering. Curtis says these are particularly useful for parents with older children who are keen to treat their youngest as part of the family rather than a separate entity requiring totally different food.

The Ella’s Kitchen range is packaged solely in stand-up foil-laminate pouches with a screw cap, made by Gualapack in Italy. The pouches give the product a unique presence on-shelf, and are designed to be more convenient and require less processing than standard jars. Ella’s Kitchen does not use pictures of babies on its packs. A spokeswoman explains: Everything is done from a kid’s point of view and to be appealing to them, and they like the bright, bold designs.

Organic baby food brand Plum Baby packs its foods into air-tight, resealable plastic pots with a cartonboard outer sleeve, as the company’s research suggested parents felt that glass jars were ‘second best’ in terms of the taste, texture and nutrition of their contents.

Searching for simplicity
Aiming to increase convenience, many formula milk manufacturers offer single-serving, ready-to-drink formula milks in liquid cartons. SMA’s ready-to-drink range is packaged in aseptic Tetra Briks, which have to be cut open with scissors. Tetra Pak retail manager for the UK and Ireland Ian Williamson says he is surprised the foil tear tab has not been more widely adopted in the UK. It’s a simple and cheap way of providing easy opening for single servings that do not need resealing. It’s used in Europe, but very rarely in the UK.

Heinz worked with RPC Containers to make its powdered formula milk easier to use. RPC Market Rasen designed and manufactured a custom-moulded lid, incorporating a detachable scoop and levelling bar, for the product’s high barrier paperboard can, to enable parents to accurately measure the correct dose of powder with one hand. The paperboard can was produced by Sonoco and is hermetically sealed to maintain product quality on shelf.

While baby food firms focus on the quality of their products, baby product manufacturer Tommee Tippee focuses on improving how these foods reach babies’ mouths. London-based design consultancy Webb Scarlett deVlam has worked with Tommee Tippee to create a patented ‘flex and stretch’ teat for baby bottles. The Closer to Nature teat mimics the experience of breast feeding for a baby, making it easier for mums to switch between breast and bottle feeding.

Webb Scarlett deVlam also designed the Tommee Tippee Easiflow drinking spout for baby cups, which allows liquid to flow freely so the child doesn’t have to suck the bottle.

Partner Ian Webb’s vision for the future of baby bottle feeding combines ready-to-drink milk with the Closer to Nature teat and electronic technology. He argues that it would be possible to electronically replicate the sound and pulsation of a heartbeat in a baby bottle – making the experience of bottle feeding even closer to breast feeding. It could also potentially be possible for the bottle to be able to confirm electronically that it was being used properly – offering the ultimate reassurance for parents.

While the yummy mummy and working mum trends show no signs of abating there will continue to be a need for baby foods that combine high quality ingredients with convenience. And packaging manufacturers will continue to be called on to develop the best ways to feed the most delicate of consumers.

BISPHENOL A
Last year, the Canadian federal government added Bisphenol A (BPA) to its list of toxic chemicals and drafted regulations that ban the sale of plastic baby bottles containing the chemical. US retail giant Wal-Mart announced it would stop selling baby bottles that included BPA. And the UK national media was full of scare stories about the ‘gender-bending’ chemical.

However, a European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review concluded that dietary exposure to BPA, including that of infants, was well below the tolerable daily intake (TDI). The TDI is an estimate of the amount of a substance, relative to body weight, that can be ingested over a lifetime without appreciable risk. This means, in terms of BPA, that a three-month-old, bottle-fed baby, weighing 6kg would need to consume more than four times the usual number of bottles of baby formula each day before it would reach the TDI.

Glass packaging manufacturer O-I says that concerns about BPA have increased demand for glass baby bottles, which it has started manufacturing in the US for the first time in 20 years, and that a similar trend was also being seen in Europe. However, Mothercare says glass baby bottle purchases are still low – around 1% of sales. Mothercare stocks standard polycarbonate bottles, which contain BPA, as well as glass bottles and polypropelyne bottles, which are free from BPA. Last month Tommee Tippee launched a (BPA-free) polypropylene feeding bottle, which will initially be available in Boots and Mothercare stores nationwide.

SECTOR ANALYSIS
The UK baby food market was worth £383.1m in 2007. However, it has witnessed a mixed performance in recent years, with standard milk formula experiencing a slowdown in demand, in line with a stagnant birth rate and government campaigns in support of breastfeeding. Baby food manufacturers have subsequently turned to innovation to raise price positions and minimise the effects of volume decline.

A key strategy has been to try to hold on to consumers for longer, leading to the emergence of a buoyant toddler milk and snacks category. Traditionally, baby food has been either for babies aged four months and up, or babies seven months and up, but now a third category has been introduced for babies older than 13 months, with ready-to-drink ‘growing-up’ milk with added vitamins for toddlers growing 8% in volume alone in 2008. Segmentation is also widening demand for targeted foods for toddlers, with a wide range of juice, yoghurt and snack products also entering the market.

While the health benefits of breastfeeding for new babies are being widely recognised and sales of standard milk formula continue to slow, Euromonitor believes the toddler milk and snacks categories offer the best potential for future growth.

With a plethora of product choice, retailers and manufacturers need to educate consumers carefully about what is suitable for each particular stage to help new parents in a potentially daunting category. The purchasing of baby food can be a fraught process for some mothers, and so clear signs and labelling will make it easier to browse and experiment confidently.

Global baby food sales in millions of units

Source: Euromonitor International

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