As we’ve mentioned before, food packaging is crucial for your business. Good food packaging entices the user to buy your product, protects it from damage, makes it easier to transport long distances, and increases its shelf life. Knowing your ideal packaging strategy and how to develop it, then, is vital for a successful business.
In this guide, we discuss some of our top tips for developing a successful food packaging strategy. We have worked with dozens of companies to help create bespoke packaging solutions for clients looking to use polyolefin shrink wrap or other shrink wrap films as part of their production line. Read on for some of the best advice we learned along the way.
Discover Your Packaging Needs
First importantly, you need to know exactly what you need for your packaging solution. Understanding your needs is an incredibly important part of any strategic decision-making, and food packaging is no exception. Listening to stakeholders in your business to work out the importance of sustainability, cost, design style, shelf life, and other factors will greatly inform you of what kind of packaging solution you need.
For example, if your packaging needs to prevent loss of moisture and dehydration of your product (for example, if you are packaging bell peppers or cucumbers) to extend its shelf life, then it is likely that shrink wrapped food is better than other packaging options. However, if you merely need to unitise multiples to make them easier to transport on pallets as freight, then stretch wrap or another cheaper and less attractive solution might be preferable.
Work out your needs early on to discover what packaging solution is right for you.
Understand Your Product
Some packaging solutions are simply unfeasible for specific products. For example, while containerboard cardboard packaging can look very nice, it is much more expensive than polyolefin shrink wrap, with prices for material rising by as much as 27% last year, with the rise in price driven by increased import costs and pulpwood manufacturing. Even then, however, cardboard packaging is much more expensive than polyolefin shrink wrap or other alternatives. Therefore, knowing your product costs per-unit and how much budget you have to work with is vital when choosing a product packaging solution.
Additionally, some products will have certain risks attached to them which make them unsuitable for shrink wrapping. For example, highly flammable or explosive goods cannot be conventionally shrink-wrapped and require bespoke packaging solutions to adhere to basic health and safety requirements. Talk to us if you think your product has any special packaging needs and we will be happy to give you our advice.
Trial Different Options
When you choose a final packaging design, you typically have more than one option from which to choose. It can be tough to decide which style is better, in fact, without seeing it in practice. That is why we strongly recommend, both to our clients and to any business, to try out different packaging options before making a final decision.
By seeing your final product in its packaging, you can see if your hope for what the outcome would look like matches reality. You can also tell if there are any extra side effects or added difficulties to the packaging solution you’ve chosen. For example, issues like whether you have enough space in your warehouse to home your chosen shrink wrapping machine might seem like an afterthought, but if you don’t have space, then you might have to go for a smaller type of shrink wrapper. You can take a look at our range of shrink wrapping machines online for more information about their sizes. You may wish to look at shrink chamber as we supply many options to handle different pack sizes.
Additionally, by seeing your product in multiple forms of packaging, it reduces the chance that you will be overly wedded to one particular idea to the detriment of your business. Keeping an open mind and accepting that there is more than one good solution to your problem will ultimately help you make the right decision.
If you are considering using shrink wrap as a packaging solution for your food products, take a look at our range of polyolefin shrink wrap. Or, get in touch with us directly, and we will be happy to provide you with our assistance.
