Bentonite Performance Minerals LLC (BPM), a subsidiary of Halliburton, recently came to TricorBraun with a tall order—the brand wanted to redesign its current cat litter package to develop a more robust bottle design with less material. BPM also wanted to lower costs, lower capital and simplify the supply chain. To some, a more robust design with less material may sound counterintuitive, but to the Design & Engineering Group at TricorBraun, one of North America's leading providers of rigid, corrugated and flexible packaging, this is just the type of challenge that it welcomes with open arms. The project management team recommended one custom mold with two interchangeable body blocks to accommodate two bottle sizes—in the short term, this would result in one of several cost-saving ideas that the team would propose during the course of the project.

BPM, with more than 85 years of history in product innovation and a commitment to quality, produces sodium bentonite mined from the highest quality Wyoming reserves, which is used in scoopable cat litter. The design request was a 2-gallon (14-16 lbs. HDPE) and a 2.5-gallon (20-22 lbs. HDPE) bottle for private label scoopable, flushable and clumpable cat litter. According to Jim Mabrey, business development & sales manager, BPM, "My biggest concern was how do you offer the smaller size, have the material compact and not have the bottle look under filled?"