Premium pet food brand launches easy-serve inverted cup

Amcor and premium pet food brand Ge Wu An have introduced the Li Kou pet food cup, described as the first commercial use of an inverted-cup packaging format in China.

Designed for wet pet food, the pack uses a bottom seal that allows the contents to be released into a bowl by peeling the seal, inverting the container and lifting the cup away. The approach is intended to enable the meal to be removed in one piece without the need for scraping or scooping.

The packaging combines a polypropylene (PP) cup with top lidding and bottom seal films.

Development of the format was partly driven by challenges associated with serving wet pet food from conventional cans, such as food remaining inside the container, damaged pull rings and potentially sharp edges.

The cup-and-film construction also provides a lightweight alternative to aluminium cans. According to the companies, the format uses less material per unit and reduces the overall weight of the packaged product during transportation.

The development of this new product was driven by real pain points that pet owners face every day. We wanted to completely optimize the experience from opening to serving — so pets get complete nutrition and owners spend less time cleaning up, raising the everyday feeding experience from the ground up.

Liu Mengru, brand lead at Ge Wu An.

The project was developed through Amcor's Catalyst™ innovation platform, with Amcor and Ge Wu An collaborating from the early stages of the packaging development process.

Ge Wu An contributed its knowledge of the wet pet food market and consumer requirements, while Amcor provided packaging development expertise. The companies worked together for more than a year to develop the concept into a format suitable for commercial use.

The resulting Li Kou cup combines the primary container, lidding film and bottom seal within a single packaging system, with the inverted design intended to simplify the process of transferring wet pet food from the pack to a bowl.