Thinking Outside the Box: Tetra Pak's Past and Future

摘要

September 2002 marked the 50th anniversary of the first Tetra Pak packaging system. Conceived, according to legend, in Rueben Rausing's kitchen in Sweden, the invention represented the birth of a new concept―a paperboard composite for the containment of fluid milk. Derived from observation of Mrs. Rausing's home-made sausage making, the package was fabricated from roll stock material to produce an economic and efficient tetrahedral shape. The shape, with end heat seals at 90° angles to each other, has returned to the market to fascinate Generation X. Shortly after Rausing's delivery by horse-drawn cart of his first machine to a local dairy, the tetrahedral form was married to a new technology called aseptic, and ambient-temperature, shelf-stable-beverage distribution was born. All of this and more was recounted in detail by Tetra Pak executive Gordon Robertson in his article, "The Paper Beverage Carton: Past and Future," in the July 2002 issue of Food Technology.