How it began
Ruben Rausing and Erik Åkerlund set up a food carton company in Malmö in 1929. By the early 1940s Rausing, by then the sole owner, was developing a package for milk. In 1944 Erik Wallenberg, an assistant in the company laboratory, came up with the idea of making a tetrahedron-shaped package from a tube of paper, and Rausing filed a patent on March 27, 1944. A prototype filling machine followed in 1946. AB Tetra Pak was established in Lund in 1951, and the system was presented to the press that May.
Before it existed
In most European countries at the time, staple groceries were sold over the counter, in glass bottles or paper wraps, and milk was often sold loose. Rausing had seen self-service grocery stores while studying in the United States in the 1920s and concluded that pre-packaging was a more hygienic and practical way of distributing food.
How it works
The package is a tetrahedron, a shape with four triangular faces, made from a tube of plastic-coated paper. The tube is filled and sealed in one continuous operation. Rausing's wife Elisabeth reportedly came up with the idea of sealing the packages through the milk itself while the tube was being filled, in the manner of stuffing sausages. The company took its name from the shape.
How it spread
In 1952 the first filling machine, producing 100 ml cream tetrahedrons, was delivered to a local dairy in Lund. A machine for 500 ml milk packages was sold to a Stockholm dairy in 1954, and the first export went to Hamburg the same year, followed by France, Italy, Switzerland, the Soviet Union and Japan. The system had many technical problems in the 1950s. The commercial breakthrough came in the mid-1960s with the brick-shaped Tetra Brik of 1963 and aseptic packaging.
Who pushed back
Who invented the tetrahedron package was the subject of some disagreement. Erik Wallenberg received no formal recognition until 1991, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences awarded him its Great Gold Medal for the invention. The system was also beset by technical problems in the 1950s, and the company had financial troubles well into the 1960s.
What lasted
Aseptic cartons, which laminate thin aluminum foil with paper and polyethylene, made it possible to distribute milk and other drinks without a cold chain. First conceived for UHT milk, they are now also used for fruit juices, soups and yogurt drinks. Tetra Pak grew from six employees in 1954 into a company operating in more than 160 countries.
