Home-meal replacement moves a notch higher in Sweden with environmentally friendly trays on ready-made meals from Gunnar Dafgard AB. Billy's Lasagne chilled meals come in molded wood-pulp packaging.

Sustainability is driving the excess from packaging materials, energy use, and waste. The challenge for brand owners will be to improve product protection and shelf impact while also using materials and technologies that lessen packaging's environmental impact.

When suppliers talk proactively with the right people, the result often is packaging that stands out in a crowd—with money-saving efficiencies along the way.

A common consumer complaint in bakery products is that the containers are often awkward to carry. Frequently the cartons risk collapse or bend and damage the delicate bakery goods inside unless consumers balance the package in their hands as they carry it.

Plastic containers with handles have recently elevated convenience in the sugar aisle, which has been home to paper sacks for decades. In Canada, here is how another marketer improves convenience in sugar packaging.

Tate & Lyle Canada Ltd., Toronto, markets Redpath Half, a sweetener, in widemouth paperboard/foil composite cans from Sonoco. The cans hold either 210 g or 400 g of sugar and are made of 100% recycled paperboard with a high-barrier foil liner that locks out moisture and oxygen and keeps the granular sweetener free of clumps.

A tabbed, peelable membrane serves as both a security and freshness barrier, and adheres to the can rim.

Graphics feature gravure-printed labels.

Plastic containers with handles have recently elevated convenience in the sugar aisle, which has been home to paper sacks for decades. In Canada, here is how another marketer improves convenience in sugar packaging.

Clarity in communicating what a product does is crucial when product and category are unique. Consider aquaICE, Dublin, OH. The company took a fresh look at its premium ice cubes in the shelf-stable form of purified water filled into sealed trays and boxed for sale. At home, consumers freeze the trays as needed and place the cubes directly in beverages.

A solid ball of detergent, Oxi Clean “Toss-n-Go” is no ordinary laundry product. Its packaging, a thermoformed clamshell inside a conical paperboard sleeve, is equally innovative. Amid the ever-so-predictable jugs and cartons in the detergent aisle, brand owner Church & Dwight’s conical sleeve packaging with the protruding ball in the front really stands out.

The leading edge of in-store pizza marketing is shifting to the refrigerated aisle in supermarkets, with fresh deli pizzas, and focusing less on the freezer case. Uno Foods, Brockton, MA, offers a good example of how packaging is playing a pivotal role in this trend.

From fabric and skin care to energy drinks, new packages communicate what the product does

Mintel’s Global New Products Database cites several products that have recently come on the market. Each product’s packaging spotlights the product benefits.

Consumers’ cereal packaging needs (and those of frustrated bag-in-box cereal eaters everywhere) are about to be realized with the sleeve-in-pouch (SIP) package design. The brainchild of Hosokawa Yoko, the SIP design emulates the cube of a carton, offers the easy-open/reclosure attributes of a zipper, and capitalizes on the efficiencies of in-line form-fill-seal manufacturing.

Hewlett Packard’s move to RPETG gives its club store packs of ink-jet cartridges an environmentally friendlier edgs.

Launches of new products have been particularly active over the last year in the facial-care aisle. The category is enjoying growth on two fronts: products formulated and packaged for men, as well as in-the-home, salon-style treatment kits.

The warehouse club's packaging makeover features paperboard-blister hybrids.

Wines in packaging that bring a fresh look to the aisle are leading category sales in U.S. grocery, liquor, and drug stores. Sales are up more than 50% for wine brands using wine-in-box packages and those with screwcap closures.

Point-of-purchase (P-O-P) displays that are shoppable from multiple sides have become requirements in club stores and with some mass merchandisers. Murray Biscuit Co. collaborated with Multi-Dimensional Resources, a designer and manufacturer of P-O-P displays, to bring this P-O-P tactic to grocery stores.

Kleenex Facial Tissues’ innovative oval carton improved the brand’s holiday sales, leveraging both package shape and a custom hologram of a pattern of ornaments. These elements deliver visual impact and value and have made the carton a 2006 Paperboard Packaging Council award winner. The oval shape in the container, produced by Smurfit-Stone, is different in the category.

Store brands are going ‘uptown’ and reaching the store perimeter. Research identifies paperboard as one desirable material for packages to help in this push.

Private-label products are fast shedding their reputation as coming from “the other side of the tracks.” And according to new consumer and retailer research, marketers should know that paperboard is one packaging material that may be particularly well suited to serving the evolution of private-label brands. Here are two reasons why:

Research: The best packages engage consumers as both shoppers and product users while helping retailers build their bottom line.

Consumers crave convenient products that simplify and accent their lifestyles. Retailers demand shelf impact, product security, and customization. The term that best describes each of these desires is “value,” and both consumers and retailers point to paperboard as a packaging material they would like to see used more frequently—and effectively—to deliver it.
They told independent researchers recently that paperboard packaging offers under-explored potential for providing value in ways that matter to them.

Marketers should integrate the value chain to clarify packaging’s price-value relationship with the product and enhance security.

First in a series

Marketers looking to boost shelf impact should take a closer look at paperboard packaging. So says a two-year study of consumers and independent research conducted by consultancies Packaging & Technology Integrated Solutions and NewProductWorks for the Paperboard Packaging Alliance, a joint relationship between the Paperboard Packaging Council and the American Forest & Paper Association.