Inventor of the stackable Tetra Pak dies in Freiburg
Published: Friday, Dec 27th 2024, 14:30
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The inventor of the modern Tetra Pak beverage carton, Ake Gustafson, has died in Switzerland at the age of 101. The Swede died a week ago Thursday at his home in Châtel-St-Denis FR, as his trustee announced in an obituary.
The industrialist joined the packaging company Tetra Pak in 1959, which was still producing pyramid-shaped milk cartons at the time. Under Gustafson's leadership, the packaging was further developed into a stackable, rectangular shape ("Tetra Brik"), according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. It came onto the market in 1963. Hundreds of billions of units of the packaging system are still produced today.
Initially, however, some of the cartons leaked and there were problems with pouring. This made the ambiguous saying popular: "Buy Tetra Pak and you'll always have milk on the table." The packaging material also insulates the inventor's house in Châtel-St-Denis, where he spent his retirement, as reported by "La Liberté".
Gustafson was born in Sweden on May 7, 1923 and settled in the canton of Fribourg in 1965. In 1977, he acquired the company Sokymat, which was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time and manufactured coils for small motors. After his restart, the company grew over the years and was finally taken over by the Swedish group Assa Abloy in 2003.
©Keystone/SDA
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