“Allpress never goes for ‘off-the-shelf’. Every element of this bag is bespoke from the innovative compostable film through to the crackle of the paper - everything has been carefully considered” says Rob Lockyear, Global Brand Lead at Allpress Espresso.
The studio started with three basic non-negotiable design principles - freshness, brand recognition and sustainability.
“The Allpress packaging hadn’t changed for a long time,” Lockyear says. “One of our brands greatest strengths is it’s consistency and recognition with coffee drinkers all over the world so it was important we preserve as much of that as possible while bringing it into the future.”
To retain Allpress’ characteristic Dark Brown and Tan brand colours they used a kraft paper substrate and reverse-printed the darker elements with water-based inks. The result is a deceptively simple paper bag - heavily textured with a nice crackle in the hand.
“Michael (Allpress) is obsessed with the details including the sound paper makes - it might seem over the top but it was important to us to have nice crisp edges for shelf presence and a bag that felt and sounded great in the hand. Coffee is a sensory experience and it starts with the packaging.”
The baroque scrolling side-pattern that had been a core Allpress element since the ’90s has been updated with a new graphic abstracted from images of freshly picked coffee drying on the patios at origin. The raked lines reference Japanese zen gardens as much as coffee. Most of the text was removed from the bag and moved onto the website with a simple and clear message of how to dispose of the bag responsibly.
When it came to materials to preserve the quality of the coffee inside the bag there was one clear winner - a plant-based biopolymer film made in Italy with an innovative coating with exceptional oxygen barrier properties to rival traditional plastic and metal foil packaging.
"Once we solved that issue, the bag-making tooling wouldn’t work with the compostable film so we would have to find another factory. It just went on and on!”
“Our roastery team tested many types of films but this one really stood out. Unfortunately, these compostable materials are much more brittle than plastic so we had to find a paper and construction method that would give us the structural integrity we needed while looking beautiful,” Lockyear says.
“We tried so many combinations. We’d find a paper we liked but the fibres of the paper weren’t creating the strength we needed. Once we solved that issue, the bag-making tooling wouldn’t work with the compostable film so we would have to find another factory. It just went on and on!”.
The icons representing the six coffees in Allpress’ intentionally limited range were refreshed to make them feel like more of a family and to be more digital-friendly. These appear on updated labels which open with a tactile perforation and feature Allpress’ characteristically accessible flavour descriptions.
Allpress’ new commercially compostable packaging is available now in 250g and 1kg bags with their 3kg wholesale bag launching later this year.
