From: Packaging Digest

Front and back view of the split pouch that separates jerky from the nuts and fruit bits.

Dual-compartment pouch permits two types of all-natural ingredients to stay separate and fresh until it seamlessly becomes a single-compartment pouch at the point of use. The secret is…

KOOEE! Snacks’ unique name is matched by unique packaging. The name originates from a call made by Indigenous Australians to shout across vast distances, but, according to the pouch copy printed along the side header, these days it serves as “An Australian call made in the outdoors expressing the freedom and exhilaration that nature brings.”

“We wanted to capture that raw energy in our brand,” adds ceo/cofounder Shaun Malligan, who explains that the patent-pending pouch packaging’s dual-compartment uniqueness arose out of necessity.

“The ingredients are separated because they have different inherent water-activity values (i.e., moisture),” he says. “If stored in the same pouch, the water from the high-water-activity ingredients—the jerky—will in time flow to the low-water-activity ingredients, the nuts, until they are in equilibrium.

“This will result in dry jerky and soft nuts. However, we didn’t want to create simply two separate pouches, as that defies the point of having the product as a ‘Jerky Trail Mix,’ and is a less satisfying consumer experience. What we came up with solves both problems in the most seamless way.”

The RIP>PEEL>MIX bag

The solution was the RIP>PEEL>MIX pouch, which allows that specific sequence of ripping open the packaging, peeling apart the pouch and mixing the ingredients together.

Notably, the pouch opens along the side, 90 degrees from the typical snack pack, which allows full-length access into the pouch to make both mixing and snacking easier. 

Opening the 2.15-oz pouch, done easily via die-cut notch along the side header, reveals a dual-compartment arrangement that becomes a single compartment when the pouch sides are pulled apart during opening. That process is as neat and simple as the opening. A thin strip of adhesive down the middle inside of the pouch causes the one side of the film to adhere to the other to create the two compartments. The jerky compartment includes a FreshUs oxygen absorber, which assists in the product’s 12-month shelf life printed in EXP[MO][YR] format contact-coded on the pouch edge along with alphanumeric production coding.

One window per compartment

A nice detail in the design is that two triangle-shaped unprinted view windows are situated vertically above each other so that the jerky appears in the upper window and the nut and fruit mix appears in the lower. This permits consumers to see the ingredients separately to underscore that’s exactly what the packaging does: Keeps them separated until use.

The product was launched last fall in two flavors, smoked chipotle with apple and lime pepper with mango. The all-natural, gluten-, soy- and dairy free-ingredients include 100% grass-fed, non-GMO beef from cattle raised in Tasmania, Australia.

Each pack is printed with a 10-digit traceability code so that consumers can trace the beef in every pack to the farm on which it was raised. Keystroking the number at the Kooee Snacks website reveals information about the farm and the farmers that the beef came from and even what grasses the cows ate.

Each pack, which sells for a suggested price of $6.49, packs a minimum 20g of protein.

The company has filed a patent application for the packaging that won’t be available publically until February 2016. Thus Malligan is understandably hesitant to reveal much about the packaging, though he does acknowledge that the pouch is made “with a high-barrier bag common for jerky bags. We [decline] to name the vendor, but it was difficult to find a supplier willing to take the time to create what we wanted.”

Malligan says the most difficult part of the packaging development was “figuring out a structure that would work!”

If you want to know more and see how that packaging works, the company’s Kickstarter video on Vimeo shows how the packaging works around the 3:15 minute mark.

If you have an interest in this market segment, this search lists Packaging Digest’s other articles on jerky packaging.