Country: Australia and New Zealand

Category: Medical and Pharmaceutical

EzyGrip is developed as we are experiencing a global trend where national populations are ageing, and many consumers suffer reduced hand strength and dexterity. A more accessible and inclusive design is needed to ease limited mobility issues. Our senior population would benefit from a better ergonomic design that makes opening a product more accessible.

With its instantly recognisable design, the multi-lobed with a sinusoidal profile substantially reduces grip force and improves leverage while maintaining a comfortable action. This benefit enhances the confidence and independence of people with hand and wrist strength limitations.

Technically, EzyGrip is suitable for all circular closures' existing tooling, compatible with seal insertion, and its unique design improves the capping process by eliminating conveyor jamming. EzyGrip doesn't affect child-resistant performance as they don't change the CRC operating principles nor interfere with the tamper-evidence function. All these make manufacturing EzyGrip cost-effective in comparison to conventional designs.

Category: SPECIAL AWARD - Accessible Packaging

Special Award: Silver Award

EzyGrip is developed as we are experiencing a global trend where national populations are ageing, and many consumers suffer reduced hand strength and dexterity. A more accessible and inclusive design is needed to ease limited mobility issues. Our senior population would benefit from a better ergonomic design that makes opening a product more accessible.

Designed with a multi-lobed external profile that provides a grip surface more perpendicular to the fingers than a conventional circular cap. These lobes, plus a revised profile for the raised knurling of the side of the cap, enable a substantially reduced grip force for the same opening torque. Grip force is reduced by approximately 19% compared with a conventional 38mm cap. In addition to reduced grip force, Ezygrip features a 5% larger diameter on the 38mm cap due to the lobes, giving additional leverage on a diameter basis.

Watch our EzyGrip introductory video (https://youtu.be/Nbn7Oi8BXP0).

Do wrist or muscles open a lid?
Muscular force-generating capacity measurements show that the major active muscles during a jar-opening activity for both grips include the flexor pollicis longus, flexor pollicis brevis, abductor pollicis brevis, adductor pollicis, and opponens pollicis (Fair et al, 2008). These are muscles in the palm and thumb, and are predominantly used to provide the grip force to hold the circular cap securely.

In another study, ten healthy subjects participated and opened a jar by turning a jar lid of 66 mm diameter counter-clockwise with maximal effort and preferred speed using two grip patterns. The average normal and tangential forces applied by the thumb to the jar lid show that the normal force is the primary contributive force for opening a jar. This normal force is approximately three times the tangential force (Kuo et al, 2009).

It appears, therefore, that the wrist predominantly undertakes the actual opening of the jar, but it is less than the effort expended in providing the grip force. This is anecdotally observed when using the various "grip-enhancing tools available on the market.

How much "Opening Torque" is reasonable?
How much torque is the population capable of applying when opening a jam jar lid, for example? To establish this, one study took a sample of 750 subjects and asked them questions about how they opened jars at home. Researchers then made torque measurements using a force transducer. The findings were that 97.6% of users between 50 and 94 years of age and 100% of 20-30 year-old users would have no difficulty opening a jar when opening torque was reduced to 2Nm (Voorbij et al, 2002). Therefore, the Arthritis Australia guideline of 1Nm is a very reasonable limit for opening torque.

EzyGrip Innovation
The key innovative design feature of EzyGrip is a multi-lobed external profile that provides a grip surface more perpendicular to the fingers than a conventional circular cap. These lobes, plus a revised profile for the raised knurling of the cap's side, enable a substantially reduced grip force.

Grip Force Reduction
The grip force required to generate the friction so the consumer can apply torque to the closure is reduced by approximately 19%compared with a 38mm cap. This is because fingers now push against a surface more "normal" to the opening direction. Fingers are no longer trying to push tangential to the direction of rotation. Seniors readily observe this change in the type of force as easier to open and seal. It is easier to lock fingers in a position, as with water taps, and then apply torque than to apply a grip force and then additional torque effort, which often drains the strength for grip friction, preventing the consumer from successfully opening the closure.

Improved Leverage
While the predominant benefit of using EzyGrip is reduced grip force, its design offers additional features to aid users in opening caps. The lobed design features peaks approximately 1mm higher than the existing cap diameter, so on a 38mm cap, this gives an additional 5% leverage just on a diameter basis. However, this is a secondary gain for users.

EzyGrip addresses the accessibility challenge from the compressive grip force perspective. The opening torque for EzyGrip closures remains at the product filler/packer's settings on the old-style cap torque (1-2Nm). There is further opportunity to improve accessibility using other means, and EzyGrip designs do not obstruct material optimisation, bottle design or other improvements that are developed.