How to improve the effectiveness of your packaging products
Improving the performance of your packaging products can be achieved through the materials used, their application to packages and use alongside other products, and the size and regularity of packages going out.
As we always advocate, when considering your packaging needs start by asking: what is the intended function or purpose of my packaging? For example, does it need to protect fragile or hazardous items? Or does it need to support high volume, long distance transportation?
Once this is understood, you can then look at what other functions the packaging might need to, or be able to, perform. Can it promote your brand’s name and values, or should it be easy for the end-user to reuse or recycle it?
Packaging not only provides protection for goods during transportation or distribution and display branding and marketing messages. It can also display important or relevant information on the product packaged, such as safety information for management during transit, or advice for end-users, such as medicine packaging.
These tips can help you to improve the effectiveness of your packaging products, delivering operational, financial and environmental benefits:
Improve the recyclability of your packaging products
Where the environmental credentials of your packaging need to be an important consideration, using the same medium throughout is best to support recyclability.
A corrugated box filled with plastic void fill and wrapped in plastic tape requires extra effort and time to separate ready for recycling. Instead, paper void fill and paper tape can achieve the same protection and be recycled together, providing paper-based products are suitable to protect your products.
Reduce your resource usage and wastage
Varying the volume of products being packaged can deliver financial and environmental savings over time.
For example, going from packaging six products per pack, to ten products per pack will reduce the boxes, tapes and deliveries required. Similarly, increasing the height of a pallet will reduce the number of pallets required over time. Each of these will reduce resource wastage and costs.
Reduce the weights of your packages
Sending out lighter packages will limit the energy and resource required for their transportation, lowering emissions. However, sometimes a heavier product can deliver light package weights overall. If a lighter product requires more wraps to achieve the necessary stability or security, this will add to overall package weight.
Switch to newer products
Packaging products are constantly evolving, with new technologies being utilised to improve the functionality of materials. If you’ve used the same packaging products for some time, it’s likely there will be a newer, better performing product, that could achieve lighter package weights, contain more recycled content, or support easier recyclability. Testing and trialling different products will allow you to find the right products for your needs.
For a comprehensive review on how to improve your packaging processes and performance, speak to our team today.
