Packaging

Dayhill Corp.'s specialty packaging business has been acquired by New York-based Medical Action Industries Inc. for $30,000 in cash and $595,000 in liabilities. Medical Action said Santa Ana-based Dayhill has annual revenue of about $2 million. In the fiscal year ended March 31, Medical Action had sales of about $46 million.

In a move likely to be applauded by environmental activists, major U.S. record labels announced Thursday that they will stop packaging compact discs in the 6x12-inch disposable cardboard "long" boxes by April, 1993. But the move also brought sharp criticism from record retailers who predicted a rise in CD prices to accommodate the new packaging. By next year, CDs will be sold in the standard plastic 5 1/2-by-5 inch "jewel" boxes that are contained inside the "long" boxes.

Fortified wines, such as the controversial specialty wine Cisco, could no longer be packaged to look like less-potent wine coolers under proposed federal regulations announced Friday. "This will apply to every wine beverage imported to or manufactured and sold in the United States," said Jack Killorn, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Maybe you can't judge a book by its cover. But just imagine Chanel cosmetics without their chic black cases. Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds perfume without its glitzy rhinestone bow. Origins body essentials without their earthy, recycled wrap. Not a pretty sight, is it?

Hundreds of times a year, workers in the package delivery business find steaming, dripping, flaming or disintegrated cardboard boxes piled in their trucks or riding toward them on conveyor belts. Shippers' labels don't always warn what's inside. Yet these misbegotten packages may hold a grisly inventory of potentially harmful cargoes--auto batteries, human tissue and blood, acids, corrosive substances, pesticides, gasoline or radioactive materials.

A sheriff's bomb's squad determined that a package found at a home was not explosive, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies went to a home in the 29000 block of Golden Meadow Drive at 10:03 a.m. Wednesday after a woman reported that she found a suspicious-looking package on her front porch. The box was not addressed to any of the residents in her home and was covered with tape. Lt. Michael Kwan said neighbors were evacuated while the bomb squad examined the box.

What if the next time you walked into a music store, a compact disc sang to you? Or you reached for some beauty cream at the department store and the package began to glow, enticing you with a tiny video invitation to rediscover lost youth? Wouldn't you at least stop and think about buying those products? International Paper Co. is betting you would. The Purchase, N.Y.-based company has signed a licensing deal with an Israeli firm, Power Paper Ltd.

Ever wonder how food packagers get so many perfectly shaped almonds into millions of bags stacked on grocery shelves across the land? It's simple, according to Key Technology Inc. The Walla Walla, Wash.-based maker of machinery for food packaging has developed an assembly line machine that quickly scans zillions of almonds, shoots the flawless specimens into one basket to fill those attractive packages on the shelf, and sends the chipped almonds into another basket for other uses.

In early February, a coalition of consumer-products makers and packagers came out with their own guidelines for "green" marketing: the use of terms such as biodegradeable and recycled material on package labels. It was the latest effort by industry to appear more environmentally friendly. At the forefront of the green issue is packaging: By some estimates, a third of what goes into landfills is packaging.

The compact disc is a small product in an oversized package, and that, according to environmentalists, is a big problem. With a 6-inch by 12-inch cardboard or plastic box a half-inch thick surrounding a disc that is only 4 3/4 inches in diameter and wafer thin, the CD "is a very clear example of an egregiously overpackaged product," said Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council.