The way you present and package your food product has strong bearing on the ultimate success of your business.
Is your packaging a help or a hindrance?
If it’s a help, your product will be enjoying solid, growing sales, a low product return rate in the vicinity of 2-5 percent; and an enviable eye level position on the retail shelves.
If it’s a hindrance, chances are that sales will be down (or at the best static); your return rate may be as high as 10-15 percent and your position on the store shelves may be less than desirable. In the worst case scenario, your product will be booted from the shelves altogether.
According to SA Food Centre Industry Development Officer (IDO) Robyn Millar, there are three key aspects to packaging: branding, protection of the product and providing consumer information.
Branding is a critical success point, says Robyn. “Most purchases are planned purchases, so it’s important that your product has immediate shelf impact. First impressions really do count. If you make the right impression, your product will be picked up off the shelf, if you make the wrong impression the consumer will by-pass it and choose a competitor’s product.”
Adequate protection of the product is vital to ensuring that your product gets to the consumer fresh, intact and is visually appealing. The level of protection will depend on the nature of the product and its desired shelf life, so a product such as nuts, which have a relatively long shelf life, will be entirely different to a product such as delicate lavosh crackers.
Finally, the product information is critical to letting the consumer know about the health benefits, ingredients and nutritional information or the product integrity, along with necessary regulatory information.
Get these elements of packaging right and chances are you’ll have a winning product, says Robyn.
Other packaging considerations include reflecting the quality of the product in the quality of the packaging, and being considerate of the environmental impact of packaging to reduce over packing and waste.
Robyn said the SA Food Centre provide a valuable resource for food businesses in terms of improving and developing packaging solutions.
“A FoodBiz Toolkit fact sheet on packaging and labelling is available on the website, along with a raft of support.”
“We can put businesses in touch with food technologists, graphic designers and marketing experts who can all assist with packaging and labelling issues,” Robyn said.
Contact your IDO
Contact
SA Food Centre
p +61 8 8348 4095
e safoodcentre@saugov.sa.gov.au
w www.safoodcentre.com.au
Getting your packaging right can help your food business return premium prices and extend market share.
Successfully getting products from ‘sea to supermarket’ has long been a challenge for seafood producers.
A global trend towards pre-packaged fresh and ready-to-eat fish and seafood meals has put pressure on seafood producers to find new packaging solutions.
For those that have met the challenge, the rewards have been great: new seafood markets and premium prices.
The recent Latest Trends in Food Packaging workshop, presented by the Australian Seafood Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) with the SA Food Centre, heard that new packaging technologies offered many solutions for food businesses.
Bernard Leveau, from the international packaging and equipment company, Multivac, told food producers that new packaging technologies could significantly reduce spoilage, improve hygiene, extend shelf life, conserve colour and flavour, offer greater storage and marketing options and return top prices.
Emeritus Professor Harry Lovell of the Australian Institute of Packaging outlined a number of new packaging initiatives, including the move toward natural antioxidants to reduce micro-organisms during packaging, new methods to reassure consumers about product freshness, and a ‘smart’ microwave that reads product barcodes to calculate precise cooking times.
He highlighted two areas ripe for improvement: easy-to-open packaging and smaller-packaged options for the single family market.
Lorena Bailey, from Angelakis Brothers Research and Development team, said the business’ use of modified atmosphere retail packs had made their products more accessible to consumers.
“There is no doubt in our mind that these types of products support volume growth. While the processing requirements for ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook seafood are more sophisticated, they also support longer shelf life and in turn, wider access to markets and
more efficient management of raw materials.”
A series of food packaging workshops relevant to the seafood industry will be held throughout the year.
For further details
Contact
Emily Downs
Australian Seafood CRC
p 1300 732 213
e emily.downes@seafoodcrc.com