Combidome is a carton pack with the features of a bottle.
With combidome, SIG Combibloc presents a packaging innovation: the bottle made of paperboard. Photo: SIG Combibloc
Usually, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. But, now in the packaging world, SIG Combibloc—one of the world’s leading system suppliers of carton packaging and filling machines for beverages and food—debuts something that looks like a bottle, is convenient like a bottle, but protects like a carton pack.
Meet the combidome, a unique carton pack that SIG Combibloc maintains the best features of a bottle, guaranteeing differentiation for any beverage.
Thanks to its shape, stability and smooth pouring action, combidome is easy to handle, like a bottle, while at the same time offering all the proven and unrivalled benefits of a carton pack in terms of product protection, environmental and economic considerations: benefits that are equally important for manufacturers, retailers and consumers.
The entire carton pack—from the base to the dome that gives it its distinctive bottle shape and its name—is manufactured from a paperboard composite.
Markus Boehm, chief market officer at SIG Combibloc: “With combidome, we have created a carton pack that offers a new dimension in differentiation and convenience, and brings with it all the proven environmental benefits of the beverage carton.”
The slim, sturdy combidome carton sits very comfortably in the hand. The carton pack consists of two sections: a carton body, which is composed from the base to the dome of paperboard composite, and the screw cap domeTwist.
Inside the combidome filling machine, the two components are assembled into the finished carton pack, aseptically filled and securely sealed. The handy single-action domeTwist screw cap is positioned in the center of the package’s top, and is easy to open. At 28 mm, the inner diameter of the closure is particularly large, ensuring smooth pouring and enabling consumers to drink conveniently straight from the carton pack.
In an initial stage, combidome is designed as a packaging solution for non-carbonated soft drinks. The protective composite structure of the combidome carton is composed primarily of raw paperboard and polymers. At around 75 per cent, paperboard is the main ingredient of this composite structure, and gives the carton stability.
The inner polymer layers form a liquid barrier for the beverage; the outer layer keeps moisture out. Added to this is a thin aluminum layer, which protects the product from light, oxygen and external odors. This means nutrients and vitamins in the aseptically filled beverages are retained for a long time, with absolutely no preservatives–and as long as the carton pack is left unopened, there is no need for refrigeration either.
Renewable. Sustainable.
With their high content of unprocessed paperboard, manufactured from wood, a renewable raw material, carton packs have been proven to be among the most environmentally-friendly packaging solutions available for long-life beverages.
The same applies for combidome carton packs. This has been demonstrated in an independently verified, ISO-compliant life-cycle assessment conducted in 2012. For instance, considered over the entire life of the packaging, combidome carton packs generate 41 per cent less CO2 (carbon dioxide), use 51 per cent fewer fossil resources, and consume 33 per cent less primary energy than disposable PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) multilayer bottles; when compared to disposable PET monolayer bottles, these figures are 27 per cent for CO2, 42 per cent for fossil resources and 20 per cent for primary energy.
Compared to disposable glass bottles, combidome generates 75 per cent less CO2, uses 66 per cent fewer fossil resources, and consumes 60 per cent less primary energy.