Reengineering Food Packaging for Increased Sustainability and Lower Costs

Packaging is a significant portion of a food processor’s expense. This makes using the right packaging even more important for mid-sized processors.

- Gary Bourdow

Given today’s eco-conscious consumers, the demands of day-to-day operations, working capital pressures, internal resources, the package must be optimized for the specific operation and application.

“When selecting packaging, opting for a stock solution, or the product with the lowest price could be an expensive decision. Food packaging should work for the food processor’s product, customers, and their business,” says Gary Bourdow, SVP, Food Packaging at SupplyOne.

Mid-sized food processors typically don’t have in-house technical, engineering, or design expertise to keep up with market demands. For this reason, it’s not uncommon for product to drive the packaging decision. While this approach may take care of the more basic packaging needs, it may forfeit benefits realized by packaging that extends shelf-life, enhances usability for consumers, improves efficiencies in the packaging process, and maximizes shelf impact. Using packaging not optimized for your application can lead to costly over-packaging, packaging line inefficiencies, damage, contamination, leakers, premature spoilage, poor shelf impact, safety issues, and _ negative consumer perception and satisfaction.

Packaging redesign and _ reengineering can improve your entire packaging supply chain, bringing new efficiencies to the packaging operation.

Food Package Engineering and Design

Food packaging Engineers and Designers work with food processors to identify the packaging ideally suited to the product, consumer expectations, and operating parameters withing the _ business. Determining the right packaging begins with understanding needs, among them: