Walk down pretty much any passageway at your neighborhood supermarket or grocery store, and you will discover it overflowing with an assortment of packaging structures. Boxes of grain, packs of chips, pockets of granola, containers of milk, containers of nutty spread. These more customary packaging structures are what we have come to know and expect with specific items.
In any case, things on the path are moving. As more shoppers share their interests for nature and as more brands react, while additionally attempting to separate themselves from their rivals, we are seeing more creative and supportable packaging, for example, flexible food packaging – ketchup in an altered stand-up pouch; nut butter and oils in individual serving size pouches; shampoo in travel-size pouches; soup and broth in a resealable stand-up pouch.
Flexible packaging, because of its advantageous shape, convenience, resealable properties, lightweight, and natural effect contrasted with its inflexible partners, is advancing into the spotlight to an ever-increasing extent, having its spot as the eventual fate of bundling. As indicated by the 2019 Flexible Packaging Marketing Assessment by PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, flexible packaging represents 19% of the general packaging market and is required to develop at a pace of 3.9% CAGR by 2023. PMMI’s appraisal additionally expresses that “convenient packaging, sustainable materials, excellent barrier properties, and growing customer base for fast-moving consumer products and consumer durable in emerging countries are driving this expansion.”
Increasingly, more consumer-packaged goods brands are finding that utilizing flexible packaging enables their item to stand apart from the opposition, bringing about more buyer intrigue and eventually, leading to a purchase. A special reward is that brands which adopt flexible packaging into their portfolio thus making products easy to store, display handle and ship.
There are a plenty of reasons why we think flexible packaging is turning into a preferred way of packaging consumer packaged goods (CPG). However, we limited these reasons down to the best fives. Let us jump into why what is to come is adaptable:
Table of Contents
Convenience and portability
Customers’ lives do not seem to be slowing down in near future. The relentless way of life is moving the way brand owners are approaching the packaging of such products. As a brand owner, you know the significance of meeting your clients where they’re at; and you can do as such by placing your items in packaging that makes the products easy to grab and easy to eat. Comfort is one of the essential points adding to the ascent of flexible packaging. The flexible packaging association reports that customers value flexible packaging as it is easy to store, easy to open and its ability to reseal.
“The lightweight idea of flexible packaging has an edge over other choices like plastic or glass due to on the go consumption capabilities. The unbreakable quality of flexible packaging ensures the product safety even in case the product is dropped, the packing make the product handy thus enabling consumers to keep products in the backpack or pockets. Buyers need their packaging to spare them time and vitality, and flexible packaging delivers.
Extended shelf life
A regularly ignored advantage of plastic is its capacity to eliminate food waste, another worldwide global issue that we are confronting. Although plastic contamination has not received much of positive attention, plastic packaging for food can help nature by eliminating food waste. Couple that with the way that flexible packaging has a lot lesser carbon footprint thus reducing the overall impact on the environment.
With high-barrier films, and impermeable seals, highly perishable items like, jerky and cheddar, are kept safe from oxygen and dampness. This ensure product freshness for long, which implies less food ends up in the landfill. The reseal innovation of flexible packaging additionally guarantees that the food items stays fresh over multiple uses. Fresh products imply less thrown away products by the shopper and stores, because of waste. This works in all business sectors from oats to nuts, from fresh fruits to vegetables, all to keep the products fresh for long.
Transportation and storage
The lightweight property of flexible packaging helps in reducing the quantity of truckloads to deliver, also reducing storage space as compared to products packed in rigid packaging. For instance, juice packed in flexible packaging weighs far less and occupies less room than that equivalent juice packed in glass bottles. Less weight and less space mean less gas required for transportation, which implies a lesser carbon footprint. Extra space on and off the rack is also a primary reason for brands to move to flexible packaging. Unfilled pouches occupy far less room in a stockroom office than glass containers, jars, or boxes, and filled pouches take up less space on the significant rack.
Design capabilities
Flexible packaging considers high-calibre and high-impact graphics in 360-degree branding that conveys brilliant and clear plans, all of which have an influence in improving the brand image. The remarkable design capacities have permitted flexible packaging to stand out in markets by catching customer’s attention.
Brand owner who are willing to upgrade the overall image of the brand can do so by designing the packaging. Flexible packaging, particularly when created with digital print technology, not only enhances the picture quality of the graphics on high-end films but also surpasses the design goals.
Recyclable packaging
Recycling of multilayer packaging is a complex and expensive task since plastic packaging frequently uses a wide variety of different polymers and other materials such as metals, paper, pigments, inks and adhesives that increases the difficulties. Multilayer packaging could be recycled to a limited extent as mechanical recycling processes are not suitable for composite materials.
In this fast pacing world where everyone’s shoulders are laden with the piles of work and responsibilities, people expects ease and convenience in handling even small stuffs and packaging is one among them. Mono-layer packaging is one of the considerable future trend in the continually evolving packaging sector. It is not conducive only to cut down the logistic cost by reducing the weight of cost but may also slaughter the packaging and recycling cost.
In addition to mono-layer packaging with barrier coatings that can potentially protect the food products with every possible damages likely to occur with food packaging, provides massive opportunities to the packaging designer as well as other stakeholders of supply chain to discover innovative solutions.
Barrier coatings is a worth-exploring segment in the packaging world holding huge potential for business. Yansefu Inks & Coatings is strenuously reconnoitring this particular division since we always strive to provide the best solutions to satisfy the requirements of our customers at one place.
Circular economy
Circular economy is the most extensively discussed topic in the packaging industry these days. Since this model is the only prominent solution to the global problem of plastic waste management. The regenerative strategy of ‘make, use, reuse and recycle’ emphasizes on minimizing the resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage by slowing, closing, and narrowing energy consumption and wastage, while increasing efficiency of available resources.
Many big stakeholders and brand owners are taking initiatives to boost the circular economy by reducing the plastic packaging waste to the possible extent. And Yansefu not only supports these initiatives but also making their efforts to contribute in this venture.
Partner with a flexible packaging company
Regardless of whether you are an early adopter of the flexible packaging or thinking about the move for your brand, obviously flexible packaging is the future.
– JK Sharma, president – marketing and sales, Yansefu Inks & Coating