A cover that is set to revolutionize bakers’ work

Panibag
Mar 24
3 min read

(Original article from the magazine Informations Entreprise No. 190, April 2024 - www.info-entreprise.com)

Panibag is a company, a patent, and a brand, but above all it is a story of dedicated men and women who give their all to a shared project, an adventure that takes shape day by day through wonderful encounters and promising prospects.

You had to be in the trade to come up with the brilliant idea of the bread crate cover.

Just as the invention of the household waste bag found its place and everyday usefulness from 1950 onward, Panibag is the missing obvious solution in the sector.

Designed for bakery professionals, millers, bread transporters and public institutions, this cover, invented by Ludovic Rey, is placed inside the bread crates where loaves are stored. The benefit? Preserving bread, complying with hygiene rules, reducing the time needed to clean the crates and preventing vehicles used for transport from getting dirty, ultimately freeing up time to focus on the core of the job. In other words, the bread liner has plenty to convince!

“The idea of creating this liner was born in 2017 when I was working as a baker. It was already forbidden to place bread crates directly on the ground, whatever the surface, which obviously made bread storage more complicated.

In addition, cleaning a crate took nearly 10 minutes per crate and required a significant amount of water. So I imagined a reusable liner that would slip inside the crate and put an end to all these issues, while complying with EU Regulation 852/2004, HACCP standards and protecting staff by limiting airborne dust,”

explains the head of the company, whose invention was officially patented in 2021.

An eco-friendly cover

Panibag is a 150 L cover specially designed to fit bread crates from different brands. Made from kraft paper, it has the advantage of being particularly durable.

“Our cover is reusable, allowing the transport of roughly 3,500 baguettes depending on use. It reduces cleaning from 8 times to 3 times per month, representing a labor cost saving of around €98 per week*.

It prevents crumbs from building up on sales surfaces and during transport, helping save up to €900 on cleaning costs for delivery vehicles*. Our earliest customers are now loyal regulars, given the many advantages Panibag provides,” Ludovic Rey continues.

Environmentally responsible, the cover comes from recycling supply chains (FSC) and, at the end of its life, is fully recycled. The water savings it generates also align with today’s environmental challenges.

“Ecology is part of our DNA. For us, entrepreneurship means stepping up to the challenges of innovation, ambition, and the desire to improve what already exists and make that our guiding principle. It can’t be any other way.”

The next step is to strengthen the liner’s distribution network and potential partnerships while preserving Panibag’s independence.

“Several groups have already approached Panibag, and so far the proposals did not allow us to preserve the deeper meaning of our approach. We will be reaching out to mills and bakery suppliers to expand the distribution of our liners. As for bakers themselves, it certainly isn’t always easy to adopt a new product, but once the obvious usefulness is proven, the liner achieves the success it deserves.”

To convince people, Panibag did not hesitate to develop a Discovery Pack of 15 liners for bakers who want to “test the product’s full potential,” the company’s president notes.

Far from stopping at this first invention, Panibag is now working on the bread crates themselves, which are “particularly complex at present.”

For several months we have been working with a plastics manufacturing partner to make them simpler, more functional and more design-oriented. A prototype has already been created.

Other cover sizes and products intended for the bakery sector are in development, as well as a new innovative material that should go into production soon with a partner group. Without wishing or being able to cover the entire packaging market, let alone revolutionize it, Panibag aims to provide long-lasting solutions, services and processes for the future of our planet.

“It’s our contribution, however small, to the current ecological challenge.”

In France alone, this represents a market of 33,000 bakeries and 12 billion baguettes consumed each year. Europe dominates the bakery market.

Key figures

€1,500 fine for a crate containing food products placed directly on the ground
10 minutes: Time needed to clean a crate
15 L of water: Average consumption to clean a crate
10 to 20 crates in small bakeries
20 to 50 crates in medium-sized bakeries
100 crates and more in large bakeries or chains
Up to 800 liters of water used to clean crates
$621.58 billion: Size of the bakery products market in 2024
5.45%: Estimated market growth by 2029

*This figure may vary from one bakery to another; calculation based on a medium-sized bakery.

A cover that is set to revolutionize bakers’ work

Panibag is a company, a patent, and a brand, but above all it is a story of dedicated men and women who give their all to a shared project, an adventure that takes shape day by day through wonderful encounters and promising prospects.

“The idea of creating this liner was born in 2017 when I was working as a baker. It was already forbidden to place bread crates directly on the ground, whatever the surface, which obviously made bread storage more complicated.

An eco-friendly cover

“Our cover is reusable, allowing the transport of roughly 3,500 baguettes depending on use. It reduces cleaning from 8 times to 3 times per month, representing a labor cost saving of around €98 per week*.

It prevents crumbs from building up on sales surfaces and during transport, helping save up to €900 on cleaning costs for delivery vehicles*. Our earliest customers are now loyal regulars, given the many advantages Panibag provides,” Ludovic Rey continues.

“Ecology is part of our DNA. For us, entrepreneurship means stepping up to the challenges of innovation, ambition, and the desire to improve what already exists and make that our guiding principle. It can’t be any other way.”

“It’s our contribution, however small, to the current ecological challenge.”

Key figures

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Panibag is a company, a patent, and a brand, but above all it is a story of dedicated men and women who give their all to a shared project, an adventure that takes shape day by day through wonderful encounters and promising prospects.

“The idea of creating this liner was born in 2017 when I was working as a baker. It was already forbidden to place bread crates directly on the ground, whatever the surface, which obviously made bread storage more complicated.

An eco-friendly cover

“Our cover is reusable, allowing the transport of roughly 3,500 baguettes depending on use*. It reduces cleaning from 8 times to 3 times per month*, representing a labor cost saving of around €98 per week*.

It prevents crumbs from building up on sales surfaces and during transport, helping save up to €900 on cleaning costs for delivery vehicles*. Our earliest customers are now loyal regulars, given the many advantages Panibag provides,” Ludovic Rey continues.

“Ecology is part of our DNA. For us, entrepreneurship means stepping up to the challenges of innovation, ambition, and the desire to improve what already exists and make that our guiding principle. It can’t be any other way.”

“It’s our contribution, however small, to the current ecological challenge.”

Key figures

Comments

“Our cover is reusable, allowing the transport of roughly 3,500 baguettes depending on use. It reduces cleaning from 8 times to 3 times per month, representing a labor cost saving of around €98 per week*.