“Go-Go Fresh” cherry snacking pouch
CMI is awarded PMA Impact Award for Excellence in Packaging
Each year at the PMA Fresh Summit the award winners for packaging excellence are revealed. The PMA Impact Awards for this year were announced at the Fresh Summit in Anaheim. CMI was among the five winning companies recognized for excellence in packaging with their “Go-Go Fresh” cherry snacking pouch bag.
CMI’s “Go-Go Fresh” cherry snacking pouch bag was one of 67 entries submitted by 56 companies. An independent board of judges selected by PMA named a group of 20 finalists which were announced in September. The 20 finalists were then invited to the awards ceremony at an opening general session event at Fresh Summit where the five overall winners were announced. In addition to CMI, winners were Earthbound Farm for their “PowerMeal Bowls,” Fresh Solutions Network for their “Side Delights” potato pouch bags, Mucci Farms for their “New Pint” tomato packaging and Wholly Guacamole for their “grab n’ guac box”.
Judges were tasked with selecting the Impact Award winners by ranking entrants against the following criteria; Marketing, Sustainability, Consumer Convenience, Supply Chain Efficiency/Functionality and Food Safety. Each company that submitted an entry into the Impact Award contest was asked to identify how the packaging innovation made their product more convenient for consumers or more easily merchandized by their store partners.
“With Go-Go Fresh snacking cherries, CMI created the first single serve cherry package designed specifically for the convenience store channel,” said Steve Lutz, VP of Marketing for CMI. Lutz said that while cherries drive very strong impulse purchases with consumers, conventional industry packaging designed for supermarkets was a poor fit for convenience stores. “We were pretty certain if we created a fixed weight single serve package for cherries we could leverage the seasonal power of cherries to drive incremental sales through convenience stores, a largely untapped market for the industry. We’re delighted that the PMA Impact Awards recognized the power and creativity of our new package by naming CMI as one of the 2014 winners.”