SMART AND CONNECTED PACKAGING Case study: Macpac’s innovative advent calendar pack design
Founded in 2019, Sweetzy has quickly built a reputation for high-quality pick ’n’ mix confectionery, with its festive ranges proving particularly popular. When the brand required a new pack design for its innovative 2025 Advent Calendar, it turned to Stockport-based Macpac, one of the UK’s leading independently owned thermoformed packaging manufacturers. The new pack was designed to replace Sweetzy’s
previous advent calendar format, which used a large flattened square pack with cardboard wine- box-style inserts to house individual sweet cavities.
The brief Sweetzy asked Macpac to design a lightweight thermoformed tray suitable for a mail-order advent calendar. The tray needed to securely hold 24 x 50g bags of sweets, plus a larger 200g bag for Christmas Day. Key requirements included ease of assembly and packing, while ensuring
that each bag of sweets stayed firmly in place during transit and when displayed upright in the home.
The challenge The main challenge was designing deep individual cavities with dividers that would prevent the sweets from moving. Thermoforming constraints meant that creating full-height dividers risked weakening the cavity bases. If the bases became too thin, the tray could collapse, allowing sweets to migrate within the pack.
The solution Macpac’s in-house design team developed a tray featuring dividers that gradually reduce in height across the width of each cavity, supporting both strength and manufacturability. A half-size prototype was initially produced
to test the concept and confirm that the sweets stayed in place. Once validated, a full-size prototype was created and extensively tested by Sweetzy before progressing to tooling. The tray is manufactured using low-density
Eco-Form material, a cost-effective alternative to APET/RPET. Made from 90% recycled content,
Eco-Form utilises post-industrial APET/PE recyclate, helping to reduce landfill waste while offering excellent processing performance.
The results The final design met all objectives. “We were so excited to introduce the eye- catching new pack for our popular advent calendar,” said Sweetzy founder and Director, William Godfrey. “It has improved packing and filling efficiencies and reinforces our
commitment to more sustainable packaging, without compromising on quality. Despite being put through its paces during transit, all 25 packs of sweets stay firmly in place – even when the calendar is standing upright.” Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many praising the improved functionality and reliability compared with previous years, where sweets often fell to the bottom of the calendar.
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2025/26 • KENNEDY’S CONFECTION • 55
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