The Future Of Packaging – Three Things To Look Out For

Published on Wednesday, Apr 23 2014

 The packaging industry is an ever-changing and very fast-paced world and things are always changing, particularly as conserving the environment becomes much more of a concern.
 
Packaging and companies adept at producing innovative technology are two things that are often entwined; working together mostly in harmony to come up with intriguing and sometimes shocking solutions to some of the problems we are facing with packaging and the environment.
 
As well as being great for the environment, innovative packaging solutions benefit customers; after all, who wouldn’t love a box of food that Tweets you when its sell by date is coming up? This is one such innovation that could soon be hitting the shelves in your local supermarket.
 
This article will cover three such solutions and evaluate their potential usefulness in advancing customer experience and conserving the environment.   

Interactive Packaging

Gerardo Herrera, Director of Packaging at the Art Center College of Design in California speaks enthusiastically about the future of interactive packaging, saying that “the future of packaging design is about interactive/smart packaging and the retail systems they live in”.
 
He defines interactive packaging as packages that have “miniature technology” that notifies you when food has gone off. This would benefit not just consumers of perishable food products but also medicine companies. 

Biodegradable packaging with a twist

As you know, there has been a massive push to make packaging biodegradable wherever possible. One company has taken this a step further and produced packaging made from sugar beet that is designed to be perfectly biodegradable.
 
BeetaPac  – the trademark for this product – is made from what is left over when sucralose has been extracted from sugar beet. The pulp that remains after this process, as detailed in Packaging News, is usually used as low nutrient animal feed.
 
BeetaPac is not only completely biodegradable, it has a much lower (-40/50%) carbon footprint than traditional packaging.
 
We look forward to hearing more about this as the product develops further. 

Personalised packaging

Coca Cola achieved massive success with their “share a coke” campaign where you could buy a bottle with your own name on it. This is something that is set to become even more common as digital technology becomes more affordable.
 
Cheaper printing means that companies can do more “short” print runs and experiment more with their packaging rather than having to stick to one mass produced design.
 
In a mass produced world, allowing customers to have something a little more personalised makes excellent commercial sense and is something guaranteed to resonate.
 
Heinz Tomato Soup recently launched a campaign where customers could use the brand’s Facebook page to personalise a can and send it to someone who was unwell. This is a lovely idea that really plays into the heart-warming and nurturing image that soup has.
 
Tic Tac has also jumped on the trend and launched a mini version of its website where customers can personalise their packs of Tic Tacs.
 
Users can then share the image of their personalised pack with their friends on social media; great for the customer and even better for the brand.
 
We look forward to seeing that else develops over the next few months.

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