The Challenge
The brief was to create a container with an inbuilt spreading system for lawn care products for use in domestic gardens, which could be economically transported and with shelf appeal in the retail context. For some weed killers and fertilisers there are regulations about concentrations that can be used in the domestic arena. Thus the container needed a mechanism to provide even coverage over a set width in as fool proof a manner as possible and space for the lengthy instructions. As lawn care products are heavy the joint between the handle and the container had to be strong enough to take the weight while keeping the spreader at the required angle to deliver its contents evenly.
RPC were provided with an initial design that was expensive to make and difficult to use:
- It was made up of many separate pieces each requiring separate manufacture and complex assembly.
- Its handle section was heavy and difficult to mould.
- There was no explanation as to how the handle would be attached to the body of the container.
- The container’s shape was difficult to handle on the filling lines because its plan shape was narrower at the back than the front, causing it to nest together on the filling line.
- It was also difficult to label because the concave shape at the front of the label meant that when it was applied the top and bottom touched first and if they were even slightly misaligned it caused a crease.
The Solution
Each component was analysed for ways in which it could become more effective while being cheaper to produce and re-designed so that they could be assembled with simple snap joints. A good example of this is the main handle section which was originally designed to be a single piece moulding but the huge complexity and need for internal features made it impossibly expensive to produce. Instead RPC cut the moulding in half creating two sides that simply snapped together. This allowed the mouldings to be much lighter, the internal features to be easily moulded and the assembly of associated parts much easier.
The innovative solution to the spreader is a tapered dispenser with 4 x 10 millimetre long channels at the end of which the ingredients encounter a ball that fans out the contents to achieve the required spread.
The handle was made lighter and strength was provided by a hook moulded into the body of the container to hold it in place with the result that most of the container’s weight is supported at its back rather than by a bayonet fixing on the neck.
The handle is the most expensive part of the packaging and has been made so that it can be removed from the container with a twisting motion for reuse on refill packs demonstrating RPC’s sustainable approach to manufacturing.
The neck insert is able to have holes of different sizes for different products, reducing the amount of tooling required for different products in the range.
The container was given flat sides making it easier to handle on the filling line and easier to label and providing space for branding on the front and instructions, including the statutory legal information, on the back.
A label on the handle provides a tamper proof seal. The top of the handle and the lid of the refill pack are both flat, facilitating stacking.
Blow moulding was selected for the manufacture of the container as it is the most economic process capable of producing the desired numbers.