How packaging helps fairlife stand out in its field, and on the shelf

Henderson, Nev. — The folks at fairlife LLC don't see themselves as just another milk company.

Far from it.

So they certainly didn't want just another gable-top milk carton or high density polyethylene jug to bring their product to the market.

Milk is seen by many buyers as a commodity purchase that's really not even thought about, according to fairlife CEO Steve Jones.

Need milk. See milk. Buy milk.

But the fairlife brand aims to do things differently and its bottle was developed with the help of brand strategy and design firm Kaleidoscope of Chicago and the PET bottle experts at Plastic Technologies Inc. of Holland, Ohio.

The result, designers said at the Packaging Conference in Henderson, is an iconic bottle for an iconic brand.

Jones sees fairlife's packaging as a way to shake up the milk-buying experience for consumers.

“It was critical to the whole marketing conversation we were trying to have with our customers,” Alex Weber, senior creative director at Kaleidoscope. “You have to create awareness.”

“If you put the same old packaging out, no one is going to notice. Right from the beginning, you are disrupting them and getting them to reconsider and the bottle shape was critical to that,” Jones said.

Fairlife's design gives a nod to gable-top packaging, allowing the product to be readily identified as milk. But then the brand's larger plastic container adds ribs that mimic ripples that also provide stacking strength. A full-sleeve label is designed to differentiate the bottle on store shelves and protect the product.

Fairlife milk comes in 52-ounce and 11.5-ounce PET containers that feature a multi-layer full sleeve that helps protects the milk from degradation that happens when milk is exposed to light. And while the monolayer bottle is made from PET, there are barrier materials added to that single layer that creates a container for the No. 7, or “other,” resin category.

Because of fairlife's longer shelf life — 100 days vs. just a couple of weeks for typical milk — it's important to protect the product from light, Jones explained.

“We decided to take on one of the biggest challenges,” Jones said. “How do you transform milk? It's a commodity. It's unbranded. It's declining in volume. There's no innovation. There hasn't been innovation in packaging since the gable top box was introduced.”

Fairlife's processing approach creates what the company calls “ultra-pasteurized” and “ultra-filtered” milk that has 50 percent more protein and 30 percent more calcium than typical milk. It's also lactose free.

The packaging is designed to create a relationship with the consumer.

“Gone is the day of projecting an image. The relationship is about a dialog based on sharing of values so you can build trust in one another,” Jones said.

“We wanted to form a structure that honors milk, knows what it is, but begins to dig deeper and answer why is it different? Why is it better?” said Bryan Shova, industrial design director at Kaleidoscope.

“This is really about changing the game. About delivering an iconic brand. Ultimately a health and wellness promise that is really changing the category,” Shova said.

“Everything we did was to bring attention to this new bottle so people would reconsider the proposition that was inside of it,” Jones said.

Operational improvements at fairlife are a never-ending journey, and Jones sees development of future packaging in that same light.

While he declined to get into specifics due to proprietary reasons, Jones said fairlife already has cut down on the number of layers comprising the full-bottle sleeve from the original design of seven. He calls the information about the layers, all made of plastic, the company's “secret sauce.”

Saying that fairlife “over-engineered” the bottle initially to ensure the safety and quality of the milk, the CEO indicated there is room for change in the future. That includes the possibility of fewer sleeve layers and as well as a reduction in bottle weight.

“We're constantly working on it,” Jones said.