With today’s retail shelves crowded with a sea of often similar performing goods, can retailers and brand owners have ever had to work harder to come up with products and packaging that offer enough of that much touted modern-day attribute, “added value”, to stand out from the crowd?
As the many European packaging trade associations representing converters would no doubt testify, despite the incorporation of some truly astonishing packaging innovation in recent years, consumers remain far more likely to decry overpackaging and pack opening difficulties than fete the latest packaging advance.
Happily this issue of Packaging Today includes several examples of packaging flair which would surely confound the harshest critics. For instance how much time, effort and ingenuity must Robinson Plastic Packaging have put into manufacturing the special One-Shot blending cup which could take considerable hard work out of preparing drinks for busy café and restaurant staff? (p4) Similarly, whilst the concept seems startlingly obvious, and one wonders why no one has done it before, RPC Bebo has demonstrated considerable themoforming flair in developing a drinks cup that solves the perennial problem of what to do with soggy teabags once the tea has brewed (p10).
Innovation is not, of course, exclusive to food packaging. However food is one thing none us can do with out, and a huge source of pleasure for many to boot. It is interesting that Graphic Packaging International, which has just opened a microwaveable food packaging development unit in France (p4), is now having to devise “second and third generation microwave packaging”, since today’s consumers have become blasé about existing packs and constantly expect something new.
Packer-fillers seek added value too and, thanks to an industry which rarely stands still, are well served by machinery suppliers. Domino’s development of a laser coding system which enables hot glass to be coded immediately after forming (p3) shows not only that the desire to differentiate remains strong, but that our industry is packed with the brains, expertise and entrepreneurial flair to make such innovative ideas a reality.
Jonathan Baillie
