More and more people are ordering their food online. Cooking boxes that deliver all the ingredients to your home in one parcel are popular. If the recipe includes fresh eggs, transporting them becomes difficult. Two students have now developed EggSteck, a corrugated cardboard packaging solution in which eggs can be sent on their way without breaking.
Ordering from the comfort of your sofa and having the parcel with all the ingredients delivered to your door - more and more consumers are saving themselves a trip to the supermarket. However, fresh eggs often cannot withstand the stresses and strains of shipping in their conventional moulded fibre cartons. Nina Aulig and Shireen Walde have developed EggSteck as part of a project in the bachelor's degree programme in packaging technology at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences. The corrugated cardboard packaging allows the eggs to literally float during transport, ensuring that they reach the consumer in one piece. „Online retailers are often not squeamish with parcels. We therefore considered which products cause problems with shipping in everyday life. This gave rise to the idea of developing protective packaging for raw eggs, in which they are packaged to prevent breakage,“ explains Nina Aulig, who is currently studying for a Master's degree in Packaging Technology.
„Shipping eggs is a particular challenge for providers of cookery boxes in e-commerce. Eggs often break. Some cookery box providers have already stopped including eggs in their boxes so that consumers have to buy them themselves as an ingredient - which is obviously not in the spirit of the cookery box idea. Or they have changed the recipes so that no eggs are needed.“
Nina Aulig
The unbreakable transport of fresh eggs should also contribute to this, to waste less food.
Without plastic and adhesive
EggSteck consists of from a single, rectangular corrugated cardboard blank, which is simply unfolded and put together and then holds without glue.
„The cut-out is set up in such a way that a box is created. We wanted the eggs to virtually float inside. We realised this requirement with minimal contact surfaces.“
Shireen Walde
The clever egg packaging was initially designed for two eggs, which are inserted into two corresponding recesses in the upright blank. „Tabs of different lengths then stabilise the egg from the side and from below. The restoring forces of the corrugated cardboard also ensure that the eggs are supported from below,“ adds Nina Aulig. The advantage of the egg packaging, which is simply folded up again after use: It consists of just one material and can be easily disposed of with waste paper.
The two budding packaging technicians were recognised for their packaging idea. honoured with the German Packaging Award 2022 in the Young Talent category. The response after the award ceremony was consistently positive, the students report. The only thing missing now is a cookery box provider for whom the shatterproof egg packaging is the solution they have been looking for.
