7. Packaging Design and Management

The relation between packaging and time spend preparing food

• Over time people have started spending less time on preparing food, as home delivery, portioning and MAP have started developing

• This also positively correlates with the amount of packaging that is being used.

• Therefore packaging is not an independent entity, and the amount of packaging material used is affected by different trends

Are pre-cut vegetable packages wasteful?

• Yes because more packaging

• No, because they use every part of the vegetable (e.g., broccoli, they use the stem which people might throw away if they cut it themselves)

FMCG

• Commercial pressure fast moving consumer goods: short time to market

• For example, testing of the material, but not the packaging

Why do some companies have a lot of recalls?

• Limited testing: only testing material and not package

• Hiring a new marketeer every year

• Changing packaging a lot

• Lack of knowledge of materials

Problem with lays chips bags

• Has multiple layers

• Is therefore not recyclable

Portioning and packaging waste

• People assume that precut foods will result in more waste

• However, it often saves a lot of food.

• Where most people would throw away the brocolli stem, pre-cut vegetables incorporate the stem.

• Although it might cost a little more plastic, it saves a lot of food.

Weight of packaging evolution

• On average 26% between 1990 and 2015 less packaging used

• 1% per year weight reduction on average for a single item

Interaction product-packaging

• in a lip balm with a ball on the top, polyethylene was used

• However the oil was absorbed in the polyethylene causing the ball to explode out of the lip balm

Important aspects in packaging design

• Interaction product-packaging

• Engineering and physics

• Processing

• Dimensions (has to fit in crates, needs to be stackable for example)

• Graphical design in relation to processing

Dividing functions

• Portioning to be able to use the product (part of the definition of packaging)

• Conserving/protecting the product

• Distributing the product

• Informing every step in the chain

• Selling the product

Packaging triangle

Example:

• Orange juice is now packed in PET bottle = more oxygen permeation

• More oxygen permeation = more oxidation

• To prevent this extra oxidation = add more antioxidants

Why are cocktails of fruits used?

• A cocktail is less ‘vulnerable’ and has a longer shelf life

• Only one fruit will have noticeable differences in taste. Nobody knows what the cocktail of fruit taste like

• Therefore if it is affected by oxygen and taste changes, than that is no problem

Collomudule system

• Based on width of truck floor (2.42m)

• Pallets of length 1200 mm

• Width: 800, 1000, 1200, 1600

• Basic module: 400 × 600 mm

• Conflict with export container: outside boundaries 2.42m, difference between continent and way of transport

• Gastronorm system is different (Based on kitchen equipment)

Information on packaging beyond consumers

Packaging can look slightly different so that in factories they know what country the product is for as they will not know exactly each language

Printing technique

The printing technique is dependent on the material that it is printed on

NFC

Example:

Samsung made a microwave that if a product had a NFC chip and the product was held before the microwave, the microwave could perfectly microwave it according to the need of the product

• Was not a success because companies would need to add this NFC chip and people needed the samsung microwave

Intuitive packaging

The study of designing a package that is easy to open

Ebbinhaus or Titchener illusion

• Orange balls appear in different sizes

• However our hands will not reach differently for the different orange balls

• This also plays a part in how we design packages and how our thinking is different from our unconscious actions.

Information processing in our brain

• What we see is only partly consciously being processed

• Most of the things around use we do not see consciously.

• The conscious part does not manage our behaviour in total, only a small share

• Handling packaging is mostly executed unconsciously

What are the things that visually attract our attention on a package?

How long can you put “new” on your packaging?

For a year, and if you change it, you can put new on the packaging again.