NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, October 22, 2015

ColaLife has partnered with Amcor Flexibles to develop a lightweight Flexi-pack, or pouch, now being distributed in remote areas within Zambia to help battle childhood diarrhea (watch a video on the pack here).

In a customer-friendly design breakthrough, the lightweight Flexi-pack offers a measure for the water required to make up each of the four 200-mL sachets of ORS (Oral Reyhdration Salts) packed within it—vital in rural Africa, where households rarely have measuring utensils. The 2.4-mil pack is a 60-micron adhesive laminate of OPP/PE that's flexo-printed in three colors by Amcor Flexibles' Ledbury plant and made into a pouch at Amcor Flexibles' Pamela, Portugal facility.

Referred to as “Kit Yamoyo,” the pack’s design benefits won over the Zambian Ministry of Health, which has placed the first major public sector order for 452,000 kits, to distribute in some of the remotest, highest risk areas of the country. Distribution of the first 30,000 kits is now underway, manufactured locally in Zambia, in an adaptation of the award-winning Kit Yamoyo design which has been adapted to conform to the government’s branding and requirements.

ColaLife’s partners Keepers Zambia Foundation (KZF) and Medical Stores Ltd (MSL) signed an agreement for distribution, representing an achievement and major boost for the new product, which contains the established global recommendation for treating diarrhea with ORS and zinc.

A press release announcing the agreement, said, “Affordable, desirable, attractive—these are not words you would usually associate with a kit designed to counter childhood diarrhea in developing countries. Yet that is what U.K. charity ColaLife has done by listening to customers and focusing on packaging—with the help of Amcor Flexibles.”