Calibrating Packaging for Purpose and Functionality: The Youyi C Yogurt Bottle Redesign
Calibrating Packaging for Purpose and Functionality
The Youyi C Yogurt Bottle Redesign
Balancing performance characteristics and sustainability in packaging has always been defined by carefully considered trade-offs, even in the yogurt production industry. The need for functional, visually appealing yogurt bottle packaging can prioritize design over sustainability features that both brands and consumers are seeking.
The Challenge
Historically, Mengniu Dairy, China’s leading dairy production company, produced yogurt bottles made with high-impact polystyrene (HIPS). HIPS bottles were a mainstay packaging choice for its Youyi C yogurt brand, largely given the natural translucency of HIPS. However, the material’s shortcomings—its brittleness and durability chief among them—presented a challenge as its footprint expanded, and the growing sustainability awareness of consumers prompted Mengniu to revisit its packaging design.
With the adoption of its GREEN sustainability initiative, Mengniu was eager to explore ways to reduce its impact, including ways to support its Environment-Carbon Net-Zero strategic pillar. Decreasing carbon emissions and increasing recycling compatibility of Youyi C packaging would contribute to Mengniu’s efforts in a significant way, as the brand accounted for 30% of the company’s market share. Mengniu knew its customers would respond better to clear packaging systems, so the HIPS bottle replacement would need to match translucency while increasing strength and durability and expanding recycling compatibility.
Developing a packaging solution that could address these conditions led Mengniu to explore translucent polypropylene (PP) as a lightweight alternative to PS. PP is more compatible with current recycling methods when compared to PS, and it offers improved strength and durability, which would help increase a packaging solution’s transit and storage suitability. However, PP is a hazy material and would not meet the clarity of PS in its natural state.
Developing a packaging solution that could address these conditions led Mengniu to explore translucent polypropylene (PP) as a lightweight alternative to PS. PP is more compatible with current recycling methods when compared to PS, and it offers improved strength and durability, which would help increase a packaging solution’s transit and storage suitability. However, PP is a hazy material and would not meet the clarity of PS in its natural state.
The Solution
If Mengniu could solve the aesthetic challenge of hazy PP, it could tap into the material’s higher recyclability and durability. The team turned to Milliken to collaborate on a solution that used one of the materials science expert’s leading additive innovations—the Millad® clarifier platform.
Millad® imparts crystal-clear transparency to PP, creating a glass-like packaging aesthetic using a highly durable, lightweight polymer material. Incorporating the food contact-safe Millad® clarifiers meant that Mengniu could develop PP bottles while:
- Using less energy: Millad® clarifiers reduce the processing temperature required for PP manufacturing by enabling more efficient crystallization at lower temperatures. The ability to process PP at lower temperatures would also result in shorter cooling and cycle times, increasing production efficiency and overall output.
- Harnessing nucleating benefits: Millad® improves the clarity of PP while enhancing its stiffness and impact resistance. This improves PP’s durability and lifespan while making a packaging solution less prone to surface damage and curtailing the likelihood of packaging failure.
- Leveraging mono-material system benefits: Using clarified PP allows brands like Mengniu to create a premium bottle with enhanced visual appeal, while also developing a system that utilizes PP for all packaging components, including labels and caps. A mono-material solution is more readily recycled, as the packaging components do not need to be diverted into multiple recycling streams at the end of their intended life.
Milliken applied a color masterbatch during bottle production in order to create a semi-transparent PP that mirrored Youyi C’s original HIPS packaging aesthetic.
The Results
In March 2025, Mengniu launched a PP bottle for the Youyi C brand in collaboration with Milliken and resin producer Secco, Youyi C’s new packaging illustrated the significant gains available to the yogurt industry by switching to a PP bottle:
- The new Youyi C bottle is the company’s first label-free PP yogurt bottle, replacing the PS bottle and removing the PET plastic bottle label entirely. Streamlining the packaging components and leveraging a lighter-weight plastic resulted in less overall plastic used to create the bottle and fewer errors in its end-of-life recycling pathway. [1]
- The new bottle received a carbon-reduction certification, verifying the PP bottle reduced carbon emissions by 46.62% as compared to the original PS bottle. [2]
With the help of Milliken’s Millad® clarifiers, Youyi C retained the visual confidence conveyed by transparent yogurt containers while gaining new long-term benefits with an inter-material replacement solution. Clarified PP is beneficial in calibrating packaging solutions for both functionality and sustainability.