Supplied photo shows Kagome Tomato Ketchup in packaging with current design (left) and new simplified design. (Photo: Kyodo)
Japanese food and beverage maker Kagome said on Thursday it will begin selling some of its tomato ketchup products in simplified packaging due to a tightening supply of ink caused by the conflict in the Middle East.The new packaging of Kagome Tomato Ketchup comes amid a shortage of raw materials used for white ink and will be transparent on the lower half, unlike the current design, which is fully covered with illustrations of tomatoes, with white background.
The company said on its website that finding a substitute for the white ink, which is the base colour for printing the packages, is difficult "due to printing compatibility."
Products adopting the new packaging are the 500-gramme, 300-gramme and 180-gramme tomato ketchup bottles. The company will begin introducing the redesigned packages sequentially from later this month.
The decision to simplify its packaging follows a similar move by Calbee, which earlier this week announced plans to begin selling 14 of its potato chip products, including the Lightly Salted, Consomme Punch and Seaweed Salt flavours, in black-and-white packaging in response to a tighter supply of oil-derived naphtha.
