Food Packaging: 3 Important Considerations

December 3, 2015 Guest Post

When it comes to choosing food-industry packaging, there are three general considerations that a company should make. These will be discussed below.

 
Visual appeal
One of the most important considerations to be made when it comes to food packaging is visual appeal. This will help move the product off the shelves and into the hands of interested consumers. The packaging (which includes the label) should be compelling enough that the consumer chooses that product over the others in the same category. Remember: Once placed on a store shelf, a product must be able to stand out and to grab the attention of new customers, making them want to try the product. How packaging does this is through the use of certain colours, uniquely shaped containers, having some sort of interactive element to the packaging, etc.

 

Stability for the product
Packaging, no matter how attractive and appealing, won’t do the product any good if it doesn’t offer a level of protection. The right kind of packaging can extend the shelf life of a product by keeping it protected from exposure to light and oxygen, for example. Proper packaging can also offer protection from fluctuations in temperature, which can very quickly cause the breakdown of the product. It is important that oxygen is removed from containers so that it does not contribute to the breakdown of the product inside, causing it to spoil.
Safety

 

Adherence to safety laws is a very important consideration. Packaging must not leach chemicals into the food product, contribute to the deterioration of the food, or pose any kind of health risk to the consumer. Looked at from another angle, packaging must be safe for the consumer to open, to use and to store, so that it does not pose a safety hazard from that point of view, either. For example, if a jar is too difficult to open, consumers may not want to repurchase the product so they don’t have to struggle to open the packaging. On the flipside of that, however, products that contain products that are potentially dangerous (alcohol, for example) shouldn’t be so easy to open that a child can get into it and potentially cause themselves harm.

 

As much as possible, all food packaging must not pose a challenge to the safety of the product itself or to the end-user once it is purchased.
When creating packaging for each product, companies must decide for themselves how they are going to address these issues. No two companies, or even two products, will have identical needs, so it is important to come up with solutions that meet the needs of each product. Packaging options are virtually endless. From bags and bottles to tubes and cans, the sky is the limit. The goal is to ensure that the product inside is safe, that it is in a format that is easy to use, and that the safety of the consumer stays paramount. Companies such as Allinpackaging.co.uk specialize in coming up with ways to answer the call for packaging virtually every product under the sun.