Cakes with a green future

After three years of testing and experimenting, Chateau Gateaux have come up with an eco-friendly packaging solution, which has already scooped two major awards.

Founding and managing director of the gourmet cake company and Ballito resident, Ilan Lipschitz said they have made it their mission to do away with the iconic hexagonal, polystyrene boxes which have been used since they started the business 20 years ago.

“It really irks me when I go to the shops with all my baskets and bags and see people happily spending money on single use government plastic packets. I realised I can’t point fingers elsewhere if we are not doing our bit to be environmentally responsible.

“We hope to amplify this message to other businesses and we are on a warpath to eliminate all environmentally offensive packaging – the polystyrene box being the first, big step,” said Lipschitz, who is an internationally trained pastry chef.

He said the production of the carefully designed, fully recyclable cardboard packaging has been quite a daunting and expensive task, as it has to be able to match or better the key features of polystyrene: insulation, protection and moisture resistance.

“People often think packaging changes are done to save costs, but this is definitely not the case with us.

“To make the intentions of our change clear, we decided to communicate the launch of the new packaging to our customers before they see it in stores. The roll out project was the 18cm box and if all goes to plan, we should have phased out all polysterene boxes by January.”

Already, their efforts have been recognised and awarded, as they won a gold medal in the Institute of Packaging SA’s “Gold Pack Awards”, and a Worldstar for Packaging award from the World Packaging Organisation in Germany.

“These awards motivated us to pursue our mission further, the next step being material bags instead of packets. It would be shameful to put our environmentally-friendly box in a plastic packet.”

The first slice

Lipschitz left his homeland, Israel and came to Durban in 1995 after having worked for the Hilton Hotel group in Jerusalem.

While working for a bakery in Durban, he noticed most of their cakes were being bought by coffee shops and saw a gap in the market which he could fill. After waiting for a year to get the business approved and with a R300 000 loan, Chateau Gateaux was born in a former panel beating shop.

“We supplied mainly restaurants and much later exported our frozen cakes to Dubai, Norway and the States. This came to an abrupt stop after the European Union put a ban on SA dairy, because there was not enough residual monitoring of antibiotics in cattle by the state vets in SA,” said Lipschitz.

“We needed to strengthen our brand in the retail sector, which is when the patisseries started.”

Fast forward seven years and Chateau Gateaux is a household name and a sure find at any celebration.

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