Innovation is the lifeblood of the packaging industry. New equipment helps packaging operations run faster, more smoothly, and with minimal scrap. Technological developments help bring advancements in process control, automation, and data analysis. And new materials bring new user-friendly features, improved sustainability, and better branding.

But that’s only part of the picture. Other pieces of the puzzle help bring clarity, vision, and purpose to the process. In packaging, that often equates to a unique blend of engineering and entrepreneurship that can catalyze the innovation process, identifying new opportunities and tackling the challenges and barriers that arise along that path toward commercialization.

In a desire to shine a light on this innovation process across flexible pouch packaging, Global Pouch Forum, along with its supporting media brand Packaging Strategies, established the Steve Fairfield Memorial Award for Flexible Packaging Innovation, with its inaugural award presented at the 2025 event held in Clearwater, Florida, from June 18-20. The new award, sponsored by Skjodt-Barrett Foods — the company where Steve Fairfield worked until his untimely passing in May 2024 — will annually honor a top innovator in flexible packaging. This year, we are honored to celebrate Steve Gosling, president of Cheer Pack North America (N.A), as the inaugural recipient of the award.

“We are deeply honored that BNP Media and Skjodt-Barrett Foods have selected Steve Gosling, Cheer Pack North America visionary, as the inaugural recipient of the Steve Fairfield Memorial Award for Flexible Packaging Innovation,” said Jeff Ward, CEO, Cheer Pack N.A.

“Steve Fairfield brought a unique mix of creativity and determination to the monumental task of convincing longstanding, glass-packing brand owners to make a change with the flexible pouch,” said Dan Skjodt, founder, Skjodt-Barrett Foods. “His sincere and good-humored approach to everything he did was an irresistible combination for success, and our ability to push the boundaries of what was possible in food packaging. Steve’s leadership at Skjodt-Barrett left a lasting impact — not just on the new products we are able to bring to market, but on the people he associated with every day.”

Fairfield had an unmatched passion for life and an extraordinary ability to bring joy to everyone around him, continued Ward. “What’s even more remarkable is that through shared innovation and unwavering determination, the two Steves brought smiles and convenience to millions of consumers — a legacy that continues to grow. We extend our warmest congratulations to Steve Gosling on this well-deserved recognition. There could be no more fitting recipient—someone whom Steve Fairfield himself would have been proud to honor. Congratulations to both Steves for shaping an industry and enriching lives everywhere.”

This is the Future

“In 2007, Steve Fairfield carried some flexible pouches into Skjodt-Barrett Foods and dropped them on my desk, saying, ‘This is the future,’” recalled Skjodt, during the award presentation at Global Pouch Forum. He noted that initial reactions at the company were skeptical. Did we really think parents were going to buy juice bags full of applesauce for their kids?

At about the same time, Steve Gosling was also dropping pouches on the desk of Joe Sullivan, owner of the CDF Group, a packaging company based in Massachusetts, and was able to convince him to invest in this unique packaging format. As a result, Cheer Pack N.A. was born.

Fairfield’s pioneering vision found an echo in fellow innovator Gosling, who shared his relentless drive. This symmetry was demonstrated when Skjodt found that Fairfield would not let up. “His enthusiasm was infectious. Within a couple of weeks, he convinced me, and I was all in. We rented the building next door to our plant and spent $300,000 to build a clean room and rolled in two very vintage-looking, single-head fillers. They were old, but they worked. And just like that, we were in the pouch business.”

Fairfield’s passion for pouches proved visionary. The addition of pouch packaging capabilities dramatically catalyzed Skjodt-Barrett’s business. “It catapulted Skjodt-Barrett from a business of 60 people at the time to over 600 in a matter of a few short years,” said Skjodt. “We grew our modest footprint in Ontario from 20,000 square feet to over 200,000. We opened a plant in the U.S. that is now over half a million square feet. It was a monumental change for us.”

Fairfield was a hands-on visionary. “He led from the middle, and he had an uncanny ability to make the most-daunting problems seem solvable,” said Skjodt. “In 2010, when he officially joined Skjodt-Barrett to lead the new contract packaging division that we started, he brought with him a new customer base and a new philosophy that was built on trust, innovation, and speed to market. And soon, our phones were ringing off the hook.”

Food and beverage companies of all sizes from across the industry began introducing products in pouch packaging. “We had Plum Organics, Dole, Happy Family, Heinz, Nestlé — all of them wanted in,” said Skjodt. “It was a surreal situation with those kinds of North American leaders in food lined up at our door. We couldn’t get fillers fast enough or pouches quick enough.”

But they filled partial orders for all customers whenever possible. That way, everyone had some product lines on the market. “But we weren’t doing it alone. That same year, Steve started collaborating with another Steve, Steve Gosling, the founder of Cheer Pack North America,” said Skjodt. “Gosling was producing the pouches and the caps, and Fairfield was filling them. Together, they were like the Jobs and Wozniak of the spouted pouch world. These two weren’t just building a format, they were building an industry. That market now generates over two billion units a year in North America alone.”

Fairfield and Gosling caught lightning in a bottle — or rather, in a flexible pouch — quipped Ward during the award presentation at Global Pouch Forum. “We used to say they had this magic ability to not only come up with working man’s solutions to everyday problems, but also to always bring levity to the situation.”

“In 2010, when he officially joined Skjodt-Barrett to lead the new contract packaging division that we started, he brought with him a new customer base and a new philosophy that was built on trust, innovation, and speed to market. And soon, our phones were ringing off the hook.”

The teams faced their fair share of challenges — including a natural disaster — in the early days. “I’ll never forget the tornado that hit our Indianapolis plant in 2013, just a year and a half after we opened it,” recalled Skjodt. “We lost our power, we lost our production, we lost the roof off our building.” A painful recovery followed in the ensuing months and years.

But Fairfield never wavered, noted Skjodt. “He got on the phone with our customers daily, delivering bad news, delivering good news, always in the same calm, honest tone. He even helped us move a production line up to Canada just to keep our customers satisfied during our time of rebuilding. That’s who he was. He was steady in the storm, funny when we least expected it, and endlessly optimistic about what was to come next.”

The nature of co-manufacturing dictates that sometimes customers reach the point where they feel they are ready to move production in-house, noted Skjodt. “And that’s just the nature of our co-manufacturing business. But as Steve quite often said, when one door closes, another one opens. And with Steve, there was always another door to open.”

It wasn’t all work for Fairfield, a character known for his pranks — and often the first one to laugh at himself, said Skjodt. “That was Steve. But under that humor was a man with one of the biggest hearts that I’ve ever known. He was kind. He was a leader who would put his arms around you. And when things got tough, he would show up because you mattered to him. He built a team that stayed together for over a decade, not because of contacts and paychecks, but because he felt like family.”

Gosling was one of those people who understood Steve Fairfield deeply, said Skjodt. “Together they dreamed up what the spouted pouch could be, and then made it real.” The two Steves were brothers in innovation, and friends for life.

“under that humor was a man with one of the biggest hearts that I’ve ever known. He was kind. He was a leader who would put his arms around you. And when things got tough, he would show up because you mattered to him.”

Entrepreneurial Engineers

Fairfield was always an innovator, always thinking, said Ward. “And Steve Gosling was there every step of the way.”

Fairfield brought a confidence to his vision for flexible pouch packaging in North America. “I instantly knew that Steve Fairfield, this guy with a twinkle in his eye, was an entrepreneurial player, that he really knew what he was doing,” said Ward. “I knew that he had what it took to make something grow from something very small to something very big.”

The expansion into pouch packaging grew the employee base at Skjodt-Barrett Foods to over 600, and to around 350 at Cheer Pack North America. “That’s almost 1,000 families that two people provided for with a dream,” said Ward. “They created these whole ecosystems, which I think is probably one of the most-amazing accomplishments anyone can do.” The two Steves brought skill sets that combined world-class engineering and entrepreneurship. “They built a business based on a few very simple things: passion and a belief that you should think big, and be bold,” he reflected.

“Cheer Pack and Skjodt-Barrett together will produce hundreds of millions of pouches this year, which is pretty amazing,” said Ward. “Steve Fairfield would be very, very pleased and honored to have Steve Gosling as the first recipient of this award. I can’t think of anyone who would be a better fit. The two Steves inspire others to think big about the profound importance of friendship, a good laugh, and a gentleman’s handshake.”

“They built a business based on a few very simple things: passion and a belief that you should think big, and be bold.”

From One Steve to Another

During the early 2000s, in the early days of spouted flexible pouch packaging, Europe was ahead of the game. “But spouted pouches weren’t really in the U.S. at that point in time,” said Gosling during his acceptance speech at Global Pouch Forum.

Bringing pouch packaging to the North American market was a key strategic goal. As part of his due diligence to determine why pouches weren’t taking off yet in the U.S. and Canada, Gosling ran across a note on Dole Canada indicating that they had tried to launch spouted pouches for purées in 2004, said Gosling. “I went to see Dole Canada, and I asked, ‘So what happened?’ They said, ‘Well, it was pretty messy, Steve.’ I said, ‘Would you like to try this again?’ And they said, ‘If we can do it in North America and don’t have to go to Europe, we are 100% in.’ So now we had a customer.”

Never mind that at that point, Cheer Pack didn’t have a filling machine or even the spouted pouches, said Gosling. “So, it was kind of a unique situation.” But in that meeting with Dole Canada in late 2007, they handed him a business card, with the remark, “This guy might be very interesting to you…” It was Fairfield’s card. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together.

When the two Steves met, it was a moment of shared vision. “I met with Steve Fairfield for the first time, and by the end of that meeting, he was in 100%,” recalled Gosling. “He embraced the situation. We really started to hit it off. We started asking ourselves, ‘How are we going to pull this together?’ He would be the co-manufacturer with the machinery to fill spouted pouches from a company we were going to start called Cheer Pack in Boston. It sounds simple. But it was definitely not simple.”

When the two Steves met, it was a moment of shared vision.

First, they needed filling equipment, said Gosling. “I found these old fillers in a barn in upstate New York and then moved them into Canada. It was a very interesting time. I hadn’t seen these fillers before. We bolted them together as best we could. It’s difficult to communicate how much work went into this when you had just two guys and an idea.”

At this point, Asia and Europe — particularly Italy — had been releasing products in spouted pouches for 30 years, recalled Gosling. “For some reason, North America just could not get its head around the concept. They just weren’t accepted. Whole Foods Canada was our way in. And as soon as that hit, we had baby food customers coming in. At the time in the U.S., there were only three baby food producers. It was in glass. It was retort. And it really didn’t allow anybody else to be innovative and entrepreneurial and get into that business. Once we finally got the baby food and purée project running, we had interest from companies from across the food industry — including some large, established brands.”

Fairfield was working on the customers, and Gosling was trying to figure out the supply chain. “We were actually bringing all of those pouches in from Asia, and we’re bringing caps in from Italy at the start,” said Gosling. “So, as you might imagine, we encountered supply-chain problems.” Imagine placing an order, waiting for weeks for the shipment to arrive, opening a container, and realizing that what was sent was not what you were expecting. So they had to start investing in more North American supply-chain capabilities.

Skjodt-Barrett was buying three fillers at a time, noted Gosling. “I was buying fitment sealers and molds. We were investing in state-of-the-art equipment.”

The late 2000s saw a move into a 27,000-square-foot facility, reflected Gosling. “About a year later, I was looking for 50,000 square feet and then 75,000 square feet. We landed at 220,000 square feet. We were ordering two and three pouch lines, and molds at the same time. It was almost like we couldn’t figure out where we were going or how we were going to get there, whether or not we were going to get there quick enough, or if the wheels were going to fall off. You just didn’t know. So having good people around you is extremely important. And you’ve got to invest.”

Imagine placing an order, waiting for weeks for the shipment to arrive, opening a container, and realizing that what was sent was not what you were expecting.

When innovating and running a business, if you’re an engineer, you spend money on machinery, said Gosling. “Eventually, we started getting impacted by sustainability and recyclability. So we started modifying our equipment. Again, the engineering side of the business came out. The innovation side came out.” They figured out the thermal structure for the pouches, and the right size for the valve. The engineering team started tracking the data. Scrap levels came way down. They introduced robotics. “We were now operating at a high level of manufacturing.”

Baby food and purées came first, and a wide range of other product types followed. Sour cream worked really well in a pouch. Salad dressing and peanut butter proved more challenging.

So much must happen the right way when you’re trying to run a business, reflected Gosling. “It’s always changing. Our customer needs are always changing. Does cap and fitment design need flow control? Is it going into retort? Is it going through high-pressure processing? Is it going to fill ice cream? Filling ice cream is a totally different animal, as I found out, than trying to fill applesauce. Trying to fill peanut butter? That’s a totally different animal. Fitment size is key. Temperature is key.”

Every step along this journey has been interesting, noted Gosling during the award presentation at Global Pouch Forum. “In the end, I just want to thank Steve Fairfield. That’s why all us are here, right?”

An event like the Global Pouch Forum — now in its 28th year — likely wouldn’t exist without the contributions of these innovators. The two Steves were the sparks that helped ignite an entire industry in North America. They captured “lightening in a pouch,” and established a pattern of innovation that will continues to bring fruitful opportunities to the global consumer packaged goods landscape for many years to come.