Sustainability & Functionality at the Heart of Packaging Innovation
Future of Packaging PDF
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Healthcare packaging
a sustainable future
smart products
designed to save lives 19/11/14
#0288
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FUTURE OF
PACKAGING
61.4%
of all UK packaging
used by households
and industry was
recycled in 2012
SOURCE: WRAP
7m
tonnes of food and
drink are thrown
away each year by
UK consumers
SOURCE: WRAP
$400bn
global consumer
packaging market
rising to $500bn with
industrial end-users
SOURCE: EY
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FUTURE OF PACKAGING
19/11/14
EDITION #0288
Sustainability
Innovative solutions point to a
sustainable packaging future,
as Elisabeth Braw reports
4.2m tonnes are equivalent to filling 8,400
Olympic-sized swimming pools
Source: WRAP
95% less energy is needed to manufacture
a drinks can from recycled aluminium
than to make it from new material
Source: Department for Environment,
Food & Rural Affairs
These days, residents of
Austin, Texas can often
be found at a futuristic
trading place, a shop full of tall bins
where well-known brands are no-where
to be found. In fact, the usual
bags and boxes containing the prod-ucts
are nowhere to be found ei-ther.
in:gredients, which opened its
doors two years ago, eschews pack-aging,
selling groceries in bulk to
customers who bring their own bags
and containers.
“Initially some people found it
difficult to remember to bring con-tainers,
but people learn quickly,”
says Josh Blaine, in.gredients’ man-ager.
Apparently so, because in.gre-dients
get frequent inquiries from
would-be zero-packaging shopkeep-ers
and earlier this year one opened
in Berlin. Like in.gredients, Original
Unverpackt raised its initial capital
through crowdsourcing and it has
gone even further than the Texas
store, selling absolutely everything
packaging free.
Is this the future of packaging?
Given that the average European
discards 159kg of packaging material
each year, and that developing coun-tries
are quickly acquiring European
and North American waste-genera-tion
habits, reducing the amount of
plastic, paper and cardboard used
to hold our purchases has become a
serious matter.
Granted, recycling is increasing
– most European Union member
states meet the EU’s 55 per cent
recycling rate – but repurposing
waste consumes resources too. Eu-romonitor,
a business intelligence
firm, reports that growth in bottled
water consumption has slowed as a
result of consumer concerns over
the bottles’ environmental cost.
And in a recent report, EY notes
that consumer concerns in combi-nation
with rising commodity prices
have made reducing the amount of
packaging a top priority.
RAW MATERIAL PRICES UP
Esben Alslund-Lanthén, a re-search
analyst at Sustania, a Copen-hagen-
based sustainability think-tank,
says: “Solutions that reduce
or even eliminate packaging are the
ones which will have the biggest im-pact,
for sure. But we’re not going
to completely eliminate packaging
waste and thanks to rising raw ma-terial
prices, companies are starting
to think about more efficient pack-aging
solutions.”
Indeed, zero-packaging is far
from the only trend on the ascent.
“A lot of the current interest in
packaging innovation stems from
the fact that more food is travel-ling
greater distances and product
integrity is paramount,” explains
Professor Frank Dunshea, of the
University of Melbourne’s master
of food and packaging innovation
programme. “Some of the more
promising trends are re-usable and
recyclable materials, temperature
and environment-sensing packaging
and innovative materials.”
Over the next 40 years, world
food production is expected to grow
by 50 per cent. Among the sustain-able
packaging food may well travel
in are bottles and packaging from
Bio-on, an Italian company that
makes biodegradable packaging
from agricultural waste, or packag-ing
from NatureWorks, which uses
carbon instead of oil.
And packaging innovation is go-ing
beyond food. Replenish’s answer
to plastic waste is a pioneering re-fillable
spray bottle for detergents.
Superstore giant Walmart now
sells Replenish’s bottles under the
brand name Cleanpath. Computer
technology giant Dell, for its part,
recently started using plastic made
from greenhouse gas emissions.
California-based Newlight makes
its AirCarbon plastic by captur-ing
greenhouse gasses – currently
methane from farms – and mix-ing
it with biocatalysts. The result
is plastic products that look and
behave just like regular ones, but
perform a crucial environmental
function as well.
The technology isn’t new, but the
cost connected with the biocata-lyst
had prevented greenhouse gas
emission plastics from becoming
commercially viable. “Our break-through
was building a biocatalyst
that was nine times more effective,”
says Mark Herrema, Newlight’s
chief executive.
Since introducing AirCarbon
earlier this year, Newlight has been
fighting to keep up with demand.
And Mr Herrema sees huge growth
potential. “Landfills produce very
high volumes of greenhouse gas
emissions, as do oil fields that flare
gas,” he notes. “We could simply set
up production there. It will have a
big impact on carbon emissions, but
we want to become a new model for
carbon emissions altogether. They
should be treated as a resource,
not a headache.”
In addition to AirCarbon, Dell
uses biodegradable foam made
from mushrooms to transport its
servers and has for the past several
years packed some of its products in
cardboard boxes made from bam-boo,
which replenishes itself faster
than other trees.
But are all the sustainable bottles,
boxes and foams missing the point?
Helén Williams thinks so, at least
as far as food is concerned. “For the
past 20 years, we’ve been minimis-ing
packaging,” says the environ-mental
scientist at the University
of Karlstad in Sweden, who special-ises
in packaging innovation. “But
worldwide the number of house-holds
is increasing and households
are getting smaller. What we need
more than less packaging is packag-ing
in different sizes, which will help
minimise waste.”
FOOD WASTE
Food is indeed thrown away at
an alarming rate; in some coun-tries,
up to 40 per cent. The United
Nation’s Food and Agriculture Or-ganization
reports that 1.6 billion
tonnes of food is wasted each year,
releasing 3.3 tonnes of CO2-equiv-alent
greenhouse gas emissions into
the atmosphere.
The answer, argue Dr Williams
and other analysts, is for food re-tailers
to offer products in different
sizes. Several years ago, a Swedish
meat company introduced pâté in
duo-packs, thus reducing the risk of
it being discarded half-eaten. With
the family dinner in decline world-wide,
food companies are begin-ning
to focus more on smaller food
packaging sizes.
Which brings us back to Josh
Blaine at in.gredients. After having
started with 70 per cent packag-ing-
free products, the store now
reduced the share to 50 per cent.
“It’s pretty much impossible for
a neighbourhood grocery store to
have zero packaging,” he concedes.
Still, the inquiries keep coming
WHEN LESS
IS MORE
Berlin's Original
Unverpackt store
offers nuts and
other goods for
sale unpackaged
Image: Getty
7m tonnes of food and drink are thrown
away each year by UK consumers of
which 4.2m tonnes are avoidable
Source: WRAP
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Lately the versatile mushroom has
added an altogether new role to its rep-ertoire
– as a packaging ingredient.
“Everyone wants to do good things for
the planet, but companies make their
purcha-sing decisions based on cost
and what best protects their product,”
says Eben Bayer, chief executive and
co-founder of biomaterials company
Ecovative. “We offer a product that’s
cost competitive and distribution
competitive.”
Welcome to the new world of pack-aging,
where sustainable can also
mean competitive. Though the world’s
oil supply isn’t going to end any time
soon, packaging materials based on
renewable raw materials also provide
an attractive alternative to petrochem-ical-
based packaging foam with brand
names such as Styrofoam.
Ecovative’s packaging resembles
Styrofoam and contains not just
mushroom roots, but also agricultural
waste. Using a pioneering process,
Ecovative blends the roots with the
agricultural waste, which results in a
sticky mass that can be shaped into
foam-like packaging shapes as well
as insulation, even surfboards. The
shapes are then heat-treated in spe-cial
rooms to prevent the mushrooms
from growing.
“We had to develop the manufacturing
process ourselves,” says Mr Bayer.
“Now it’s about getting production to
industrial scale.” In a radical departure
from traditional packaging, Ecovative’s
mushroom packaging can not only be
recycled, but also composted, adding
nutrients to users’ gardens.
According to Esben Alslund-Lanthén
of the Danish sustainability think-tank
Sustainia, Ecovative’s biggest
advantage is its use of agricultural
by-products that can’t be used for food
production. “The mushroom foam is
particularly useful for protective plas-tics,
which is primarily used to ensure
that products aren’t damaged during
transportation,” he says. “And the fact
that the foam is biodegradable brings
considerable environmental benefits
because much of our packaging ends
Case Study
MUSHROOMS
NOT OIL
up in the oceans, nature or landfills.”
Ecovative customers include comput-er
technology company Dell, which
uses the foam for its servers, as well
as furniture-maker Steelcase, the
American home furnishing chain Crate
& Barrel and Stanhope-Seta, a UK-based
laboratory instrument firm. And
according to Mr Bayer, there’s no limit
to the company’s growth potential: “If
IKEA called tomorrow, yes we could
meet their demand. We’d just have to
build another plant.”
The Swedish furniture retailer may
indeed be calling to talk, not just
about packaging foam. The reason?
Ecovative has developed a second
product, one that Mr Bayer predicts
will have an even bigger impact.
“We’ve discovered a way of making the
glue that holds wood panels together
without formaldehyde, but with the
same or even better qualities than the
formaldehyde-based kind,” he says.
“And it’s not poisonous.”
Still, given that making mushroom
foam consumes energy, using less
packaging remains an indisputably
better option. “Yes, using less packag-ing
is better,” Mr Bayer acknowledges.
“But human behaviour is hard to
change. Even though it’s possible to
recycle [petrochemical-based] polysty-rene,
very l Image: Ecovative ittle of it is recycled.”
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FUTURE OF PACKAGING
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Digital Revolution
Improvements in digital
printing, and the use of
packaging to drive in-tegration
between goods and the
internet of things, means the tech-nology
is now a key to producing
“smart” products.
But Paul Young, head of packag-ing
services at DHL Supply Chain,
warns it is important for companies
to understand which problems digi-tal
packaging can solve, rather than
simply following the trend.
QR codes, for example, have
historically been the main form of
digital communication on pack-aging
and, while there have been
some successful uses, there are
also limitations.
Jon Wilkins, marketing manager
of European Automation, says: “We
are reviewing our packaging and,
interestingly, we will be dropping
the QR codes. Hardly anybody uses
them and they’ve had no impact on
the customer.”
Mike Banach, senior research
manager at Plastic Logic, says he
believes that in the short term pack-aging
innovation will be focused
primarily on labelling for security
and prevention of fraud. The Inter-national
Chamber of Commerce has
estimated that the total economic
impact of counterfeiting and piracy
in 2015 alone will be between $1.2
billion and $1.7 billion.
“Brand owners are looking for
secure labelling that has some us-er-
input mechanism [image sensor
or touch pad] and output device
[display] integrated on the same
tag,” he says. Plastic Logic’s flexible
transistor technology is enabling
the fabrication of these compo-nents
on packaging substrates such
as PET or polyethylene terephtha-late.
The ability to track high-value
goods from development to point of
use might have a significant impact
on the ability to generate fakes.
FOOD REGULATION
Similar innovation is being driv-en
by increased regulation in the
food supply chain, especially fol-lowing
challenges such as the 2013
horsemeat scandal. Between 30
per cent and 50 per cent of food
produced globally never reaches
the consumer, often thrown away
due to problems ascertaining its
freshness. Smart labelling reduces
the human-error factor by pro-viding
a visual indication of fresh-ness,
which crosses language and
cultural barriers.
Companies, including ThinFilm
and Insignia Technologies, have
developed ways of monitoring tem-perature
control in the global supply
chain. ThinFilm is developing labels
that monitor temperature changes
during shipping and store the data
for later analysis. Insignia Tech-nologies
has created labels using
Digital packaging
looks set to transform
markets, the
supply chain and
brand-consumer
communication,
writes Felicia Jackson
BOXING CLEVER
WITH DIGITAL
temperature responsive pigments
that can be easily incorporated
into plastic films and inks which
then display these colour-changing
sensing properties.
This type of innovation could also
have a major impact in healthcare,
particularly in the developing world,
with the distribution of medicines
and vaccines where lack of clarity
about freshness or temperature
changes in transportation can often
lead to waste.
Joe Morgan at Matter of Form
says: “Medical companies are cur-rently
spearheading a revolution
in digital pharmaceutical packag-ing
with methods such as ‘dial-a-dose’
smart-cap concept for drugs.
This displays the number of times
medication is consumed as well as
alerting the user when they need
to take their dose and even con-necting
to healthcare centres to
monitor consumption.”
Such innovations make it easier
for patients to control their dosag-es,
which is becoming increasingly
important with ageing populations.
There is no doubt that the best-known
developments in packaging
have come about through innova-tion
in marketing and brand com-munications.
QR codes may have
led the way in enabling people to get
more information about products,
but brand-consumer interaction is
now moving further and faster.
DIGITAL-MEDIA CHANNEL
As co-founder of EVRYTHING
Andy Hobsbawn points out, the
falling costs of technology, com-bined
with the mass adoption of
mobile devices and ubiquitous
broadband connectivity, “enables
brands effectively to expand the
limited on-pack real estate into the
digital world, turning their prod-ucts
into an owned digital-media
channel, enabling them to develop
a one-to-one marketing relationship
with consumers”.
Katherine Torrence, global cli-ent
engagement director at Red-
Works, says: “Traditionally product
personalisation was considered
to be a high-end marketing tech-nique
that catered to the appeal of
luxury brands. However, with the
evolution of the digital age, several
brands can now easily channel and
adapt personalisation to the mass
market. Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’
campaign is perhaps one of the most
successful to capture the attention
of the world.”
There are other well-known
campaigns which have used an aug-mented-
reality approach to gen-erate
customer interaction. LEGO
created a campaign which enabled
customers to scan a barcode and see
a 3-D version of their planned build.
Heinz made their ketchup label
scannable, enabling access to a rec-ipe,
list of ingredients and a teaching
video. While Appy used Tetra Pak
cartons to expand their social media
interaction with customers, through
customising online photos.
Investing in
innovation
Page 08
New technologies and new ways
of interacting with the customer
are highly sought after, and it is
this that will drive innovation. Of
course, chipsets and active sensor
tags may be currently economically
challenging for consumer packaged
goods. NFC (near-field communi-cation)
or RFID (radio-frequency
identification) can cost up to 20p a
pack, depending on volume, while
chipsets using Bluetooth, wi-fi or
other active technologies can cost
upwards of £6 per unit.
But as Mr Hobsbawn concludes:
“The key to the viability of design
options is being able to justify the
return on investment or ROI. Im-plementing
a form of digital trigger
on a pack will impact packaging cost
to some extent, even if simply to in-clude
a URL and call to action, but if
a brand considers it in the right way,
there is an ROI case to be made.”
With the evolution
of the digital age,
brands can now easily
channel and adapt
personalisation to the
mass market
Image: Getty
New York music fans
create personalised
Coke bottles at a
Mikky Ekko concert
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Taking care to combat
the counterfeiters
Ageing populations and growing counterfeits
are driving the need for innovative packaging
solutions, says Essentra
carton helping to reduce energy use with-in
the supply chain and minimise waste
during the packing of pharmaceuticals.
IMPROVING SECURITY
Wherever there is good news of mar-ket
growth, particularly involving big-name
brands, there are unscrupulous
opportunists trading in substandard
and illegal goods. And pharmaceutical
products and the packaging surrounding
them are no exception to this rule.
It is estimated that approximately
15 per cent of the global pharmaceu-tical
industry is counterfeit product.
This varies widely in developed and
developing countries, but it exists
everywhere. Healthcare packaging has
a critical role to play as a method to
authenticate branded products, and
enable consumers and government
officials to identify genuine versus
counterfeit products.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers
have indeed acknowledged the role
that packaging can play in their overall
strategies to protect their customers,
as indicated by the fact that the glob-al
anti-counterfeit, anti-tampering and
authentication market is projected to
grow at a rate of 14.1 per cent over
the next five years, with authentication
technologies performing higher at 16.3
per cent, due to increasing awareness of
counterfeit products.
So how do companies utilise their
packaging to provide an added layer of
protection and identification of counter-feit
products? In general, the best solu-tions
are multi-layered and deployed
throughout the supply chain, from phar-maceutical
materials supply to the final
packaged product.
Solutions range from “covert” fea-tures
for use by customs agencies, au-thorised
distributors and other parties
with access to high-tech readers or oth-er
equipment, to sophisticated “overt”
identifiers for those who have to rely on
the evidence of their own eyes.
Coding adds another level and from
the possible interaction with QR codes,
through to expert-level forensic features,
the use of multi-layer designs and secu-rity
features, brand owners and generic
pharmaceutical producers have a num-ber
of options in their armoury to protect
their products and the end-consumer.
For Essentra, being ahead of the
game on the issue of security and protec-tion
is a cornerstone of the company’s
success. “We have recognised the im-portance
of providing brand owners and
patients with the confidence of product
authenticity in areas where pharmaceu-tical
counterfeiting is a real problem.
Our portfolio of authentication technol-ogies
is world class and already being
deployed in pharmaceutical carton pro-duction
in countries such as China,” says
Mr Waugh.
In healthcare markets, Essentra’s
expertise in printing, inks and pack-aging
technologies delivers proven
results, whether meeting the needs
of the European Union Falsified Med-icines
Directive or protecting global
brands from counterfeit.
“Counterfeiting of pharmaceuti-cal
products is a serious challenge”,
says Mr Waugh. “Its importance to the
market is reflected in the investments
that we have made to develop a sec-tor-
leading position in the provision
of brand authentication solutions for
healthcare packaging.
“Counterfeiters are sophisticated
and dynamic, and in order to contin-ue
to help our customers defend their
brands and protect their patients, we
continue to invest and develop new
technologies to retain the advantage,
as fakers’ abilities evolve. It’s a fight
that will probably never end – and we
are determined to keep fighting.”
Essentra is a FTSE 250 company
and a leading global provider of
essential functional components,
packaging and securing solutions
to a diversified blue-chip customer
base. Its packaging business
focuses on delivering value-adding
innovation, quality and service
to customers through a range
of cartons, tapes, leaflets, foils,
labels and authentication for
the healthcare, consumer and
specialist packaging, point-of-sale,
and paper and board industries.
Customers in more than 100
countries are served from facilities
operating in ten countries.
Essentra recently announced the
further significant expansion of
its pharmaceutical and health
and personal care packaging
capabilities, with the proposed
acquisition of Clondalkin Specialist
Packaging Division.
As the worlds’ population ages we
are increasingly relying on health-care
products to support us in our
later years. Exactly how these crit-ical
medicines and goods reach us
in safe and secure, yet accessible,
packaging, carrying intelligible in-structions
and promoting brand
confidence is, however, anything
but straightforward.
The global pharmaceutical market
is predicted to total between $1.135
trillion and $1.235 trillion by 2017. An
often overlooked element of this is the
packaging that these pharmaceutical
products are delivered in to consumers.
Estimated to be valued at $78.79 billion
by 2018, healthcare packaging plays a
vital role in not just the delivery of phar-maceuticals
to patients, but also deliv-ery
of essential information.
Being both large and highly com-plex,
the sector exhibits clear growth
patterns, according to Malcolm Waugh,
group commercial director at Essentra.
“Like many other industries, packaging
is experiencing rapid growth in new econ-omies
and emerging markets, such as
India, China and Brazil,” he says. “An
ageing demographic and increased in-cidence
of systemic diseases are also
strong drivers worldwide”
Globally, the number of “older” peo-ple,
aged 60 or over, is expected to more
than double from 841 million people in
2013 to over 2 billion in 2050, according
to the United Nations. This means that,
as a proportion of the world population,
more than one in five people (21.1 per
cent) will be classified as “older” by
2050. This demographic dynamic calls
not just for more product from the pack-aging
sector, but different priorities.
GLOBAL MEGATREND
As Mr Waugh explains: “The ageing
population is a global megatrend and is
driving both growth and innovation, as
users’ needs change within healthcare
and the packaging they use.
“It is no longer just enough to demon-strate
tamper evidence to consumers;
it must be accessible tamper-evident
packaging. Nor is printing in small font
sizes acceptable any more, as phar-maceutical
companies need to provide
patients with information and patients
seek to understand more about the med-icines
they are taking.”
Responsibility to minimise the en-vironmental
impact of packaging is
another significant and growing factor
in innovation programmes and man-ufacturing
processes. In healthcare
packaging, this can manifest itself via
efficiencies that are gained in the sup-ply
chain via improvements in product
assembly which reduce waste and
energy consumption.
Companies are supporting the drive
for efficiency through innovations such as
Essentra’s Combopack™ where a leaflet
is already supplied integrated within the
For Essentra, being
ahead of the game on
the issue of security and
protection is a cornerstone of the
company’s success
HEALTHCARE
PACKAGING
$1.135trn
global pharmaceutical
market value
Source: IMS Market Prognosis
$79bn
pharmaceutical packaging
market by 2018
Source: Pharmaceutical Packaging
Market – Global Trends & Forecast
to 2018
15%
of the global pharmaceutical
industry is substandard or
counterfeit product
Source: Substandard and counterfeit
medicines: a systematic review of
the literature
14.1%
growth in the value of the
anti-counterfeit packaging
market by 2019
Source: MarketsandMarkets
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Investments in Innovation
Source: Smithers Pira
www.smitherspira.com TOP 3
BUMP MARK
AIDPOD
So often treated as an
afterthought, packaging can be
integral to the impact and success
of a product, as Mike Scott reports
PACKING
A PUNCH
Consumer goods giant Unilever
continues its campaign to reduce
the organisation’s environmental
impact with a new deodorant can that
holds the same amount of product as
its predecessor, but cuts the amount
of aluminium used by around a
quarter and halves the amount
of propellant gas.
By 2020 the company aims to
reduce the weight of packaging by
one third by using lighter materials,
optimising structural and material
design, developing more concentrated
products, and eliminating unneces-sary
packaging. To date it has cut the
weight of packaging per consumer by
11 per cent.
Its new deodorant can design, which
won the Diamond Award in the 2014
DuPont Packaging Awards, means
that 53 per cent more cans fit on to a
pallet. This translates into 35 per cent
fewer lorries needed to transport the
product, saving fuel and greenhouse
gas emissions. The company claims
the smaller cans are “the first major
packaging reduction initiative for
aerosol deodorants since they were
introduced in the 1960s”.
Unilever created a new £20-million
production line at its factory in Leeds.
Initially, the cans were used just for its
female deodorant brands, but having
saved 77 tons of aluminium in a year –
enough to make 38,000 bicycles –
it extended the new cans to its male
range as well.
The initiative follows Unilever’s
introduction in 2007 of a new formu-lation
for Persil washing liquid, which
concentrated the same number of
washes into a bottle one third the size,
resulting in one third of the packaging,
one third the water use and only one
third the required transport compared
to diluted liquids.
At the other end of the scale is Bump
Mark, a packaging innovation that has
not even gone into production yet, but
could in time replace “best before”
dates on food.
Bump Mark is a “bio-reactive food
expiry label” that tells you exactly how
fresh your food is simply by running
your finger over the label. It uses gel-atine
to model the decaying process
of food.
“As the gelatine decays, it becomes a
liquid when it expires,” says Solveiga
Pakštaite, who invented the label while
studying industrial design at Brunel
University. “If it’s smooth, then you’re
good to go, but if you start to feels
bumps as the gelatine breaks down,
be cautious.”
The label has won an award from the
James Dyson Foundation and Brunel’s
Inclusive Design Award. Ms Pakštaite,
23, has a patent pending on the label,
and is in talks with retailers and tech-nology
development companies.
Food waste is a huge issue as every
year consumers in rich countries waste
almost as much food as the entire
net food production of sub-Saharan
Africa, according to the United Nations
Environment Programme.
Ms Pakštaite’s original inspiration was
to help visually impaired consumers
to know when their food was safe to
eat, as currently the only indication is a
printed date. But, even though almost
300 million people around the world
have some form of visual impairment,
she says: “I knew that the solution
must appeal to sighted people also,
because the sad reality is that new
solutions only get implemented if the
benefits are useful to the majority.”
In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, one
in seven children die from prevent-able
diseases, notably diarrhoea,
partly because there are no medicines
available. Yet, at the same time, it is
possible to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola
almost anywhere – according to The
Economist, more than 36 billion
bottles of Coke were sold in Africa
in 2008.
UK-based design consultancy pi global
created AidPod, a packaging and distri-bution
programme to treat diarrhoea,
for ColaLife, a charity that piggy-backs
on the “last mile” of Coca-Cola’s
world-leading distribution network to
deliver medicines to remote areas.
The AidPod, which won the 2013
DuPont Packaging Award, is a self-con-tained
anti- diarrheal kit that tucks
between bottles in Coca-Cola crates.
The key to the product’s success is
that the wedge-shaped kits are large
enough to contain a big enough dose
of medicine, but small enough not to
displace any Coke bottles and thus
affect the company’s bottom line.
AidPod had to meet strict guidelines
covering medication containers. They
are securely sealed with a strong film
that can withstand severe impact,
maintain pack integrity and prevent
contamination. The latest version of
the AidPod container has evolved to
become part of the kit itself, serving
as both a single, measured dose for
mixing and as a drinking vessel.
In the first 12 months of the trial,
25,000 kits were sold to retailers in
Zambia, who sell them on to custom-ers.
When the ColaLife trial started in
September 2012, no child in the trial
areas received the recommended
treatment for diarrhoea. One year
later, 45 per cent of children did.
DEODORANT CANS
PACKAGING OUTLOOK
WORLD PACKAGING CONSUMPTION
BY END-USE SECTOR 2013
$ billions (2013 prices and exchange rates )
324
240
92
INDUSTRY MARKET SHARE AND
VALUE OF PACKAGING PRODUCTS
38%
18%
5%
3%
36%
87
33
22
$161bn
$76bn
Source: World Packaging Organisation
Beverages
Pharmaceutical products
?
Food
Cosmetic packaging
Other
Total $797bn
Industrial and
transport
Food
Other
consumer
Drinks
Healthcare
Cosmetics
$21bn
$13.3bn
$153bn
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Opinion
SUSTAINABLE
PACKAGING
IS NO WASTE
Do not dismiss packaging
as a waste of materials, says
Jane Bickerstaffe, director of
INCPEN, the Industry Council
for research on Packaging &
the Environment
The European Commis-sion’s
proposals for future
policy on packaging, pub-lished
in July, focus almost exclu-sively
on what should be done with
packaging at the end of its life. The
proposals largely overlook the role
that packaging plays in protect-ing
food and other goods on their
journey from farm or factory into
people’s homes.
They also overlook the fact that
ten times more resources are used
to make products than to make the
packaging that protects them. They
therefore underestimate the need
to ensure that companies choose
the most appropriate packaging to
prevent product waste.
In the next year or so, the Eu-ropean
Parliament and govern
ments of EU member states will give
their views on the commission’
proposals.
Businesses need to take this op-portunity
to brief MEPs and gov-ernment
officials to ensure future
policy leaves sufficient flexibility
for packaging to respond to demo-graphic
and lifestyle changes as well
as environmental issues.
While environmental considera-tions
are very important, companies
have to take into account a wide
range of variables, including cost
and functional requirements, when
they decide what packaging to use.
In addition they work out the best
combination of primary, secondary
and transport packaging.
This can be at odds with initia-tives
from policymakers who, like
members of the public, are often
only aware of primary, sales packag-ing
and may not grasp that there are
inevitable trade-offs between levels
of packaging. For example, reducing
the weight of sales packaging may
mean that secondary packaging has
to be increased and vice versa.
Each packaging material has spe-cific
properties that provide protec-tion
against different hazards and
prevent product wastage in differ-ent
ways. Champagne needs a heavy
glass bottle, whereas a vacuum skin
pack protects and extends the shelf
life of red meat; a mobile phone
needs a strong board box.
How a piece of packaging is treat-ed
at the end of its life is far less
important than how it enables the
supply chain to operate effective-ly
and deliver products in perfect
condition. Recycling is not always
the right thing to do. It can use more
resources than it saves.
In recent years there has been a shift
in attitudes. People are more aware of
the need to conserve resources, the im-portance
of reducing waste, especially
waste of food, and the need to reduce
energy consumption.
It is good to see a holistic ap-proach
receiving so much atten-tion,
but packaging manufacturers
and retailers have been doing all
these things for many years. Un-fortunately,
even now, many people
still dismiss packaging as a waste
of materials.
Importantly, there are two key
things to remember:
• Without packaging, well over 90
per cent of the products we buy – all
liquids, powders, granules, tissues,
all imported foods such as coffee
and oranges, let alone fragile, costly
items such as computers and televi-sions
– would not be available;
• Companies need to be profit-able,
and packaging materials cost
money and reduce profits, so no
business is intentionally going to
use packaging it does not need –
companies have a strong commer-cial
incentive to do more with less.
INCPEN’s members are manu-facturers
and retailers from across
the supply chain who work togeth-er
to promote responsible packag-ing
for sustainable supply chains. A
top priority for our work in coming
months will be to share our research
and knowledge with policymakers.
Companies
have a strong
commercial incentive
to do more with less
WORLD PACKAGING
CONSUMPTION BY REGION 2013
A
B
C
D
$797bn
$176bn
$48bn
$25bn
$19bn
E
F
G
E - North America
F - South and Central America
G - Asia
H - Australia
1
19%
$179bn
$43bn
$292bn
$16bn
2
14%
3
11%
7
7.5%
4
9%
World
A - Western Europe
B - Eastern Europe
C - Middle East
D - Africa
5
8.5%
6
8%
8
7%
9
7%
10
7%
TOP 10 FASTEST GROWING
NATIONAL PACKAGING MARKETS
Turkey
India
Poland
Phiippines
UK FORECAST PACKAGING CONSUMPTION
BY END-USE SECTOR 2013-18($ BILLIONS) 2013 2018
Top 10 countries
Brazil
Indonesia
Taiwan
China
Lithuania
Egypt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
0 2 4 6 8 10
Food
+1.4
Drinks
+1.3
Healthcare
+1.9
Cosmetics
+0.8
Other consumer
+1
Compound annual growth rate
(%) 2013-18
Source: World Packaging Organisation
Source: Smithers Pira www.smitherspira.com
Source: Smithers Pira www.smitherspira.com
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EDITION #0288
Packaging Trends
FROM SUPERMARKET
SHELF INTO THE
SHOPPING BASKET
The supermarket is a warzone with thousands of brands fighting for
sales. Charles Orton-Jones shows how a brand can win the battle
and seize shoppers’ attention
Marketers like to think of
themselves as puppet
masters. They pull invisi-ble
strings to make consumers leap
and dance. The diabolical geniuses
of the packaging industry give cre-dence
to this. A tweak here, a change
of material there and sales can
plummet or soar.
Take Andrex. For six years, the
Andrex brand of toilet tissue fell.
Owners Kimberly-Clark attributed
the decline to increased competi-tion.
Supermarket own-brands are
well made, well marketed and en-joy
prime position on the shelves.
Maybe Andrex’s reign as the num-ber-
one British brand of loo roll
was over.
Enter the packaging team. Design
consultancy Elmwood was asked to
revamp the Andrex packaging. The
result? A 13 per cent rise in volume
sales, in the midst of a 50 per cent
marketing budget cut. The improve-ment
meant sales of other Andrex
products rose, such as the premi-um
quilted brand, which was up
15 per cent.
How was this achieved? Fortu-nately,
Simon Preece of Elmwood is
keen to share his secrets. He says the
Andrex victory is down to the theory
known as biomechanical triggers.
“We have learnt that humans re-spond
in a predictable and consist-ent
way to a certain stimulus. The
reptilian part of the brain can be
triggered at an elemental level. The
hormone serotonin can be released
by a stimulus; neuropeptides and
other hormones too,” he says.
This much is well known. Spi-ders
widely trigger revulsion, mint
smells a sense of calm, black and
yellow – as wasps remind us – will
trigger our sense of fear. There are
more subtle levels, however.
CUSPS AND CURVES
“We respond to shapes, such as
cusps and curves. Cusps are used
to trigger danger signals. They get
our attention. Disney uses this bril-liantly.
The Wicked Witch in Snow
White has cusps in her hair, eyes
and clothes. A three year old knows
she’s evil. The typography for Ma-leficent
is composed of cusps,” says
Mr Preece.
Packaging
in the end
Page 15
“Curves, by contrast, make us
feel reassured. We are nurtured by
curves – our mother’s curves – from
an early age. You can build this logic
into packaging.”
The challenge for Andrex was
to make it stand out. “We invest
no emotion in buying toilet roll,”
he says. “There is three seconds of
thinking and that is it. So how do we
get consumers to gravitate towards
our product?”
Elmwood went for a curves and
cusps combo. “We used cusp marks
on the Andrex brand mark, fram-ing
it to grab your attention. The
cusps make sure the Andrex name
is the first thing you see. Then we
emphasise the curves of the pack.
We used matte white ink to get
rid of the shininess. The old packs
were in a reflective waxy polythene
pack which was no better than
own-brand. We introduced curved
window shapes on the pack. This
makes the rolls look chunky, but
soft to touch.”
The language got a makeover.
“We don’t just say ‘white’, we say
‘Classic White’. It sounds like a pre-mium
brand. Instead of ‘four pack’
we say ‘Four Famously Soft Rolls’ or
‘Gorgeously Soft Rolls’.”
The layout was decluttered. And
finally, the Andrex puppy was given
a new look. “We used a technique
called ‘above and below’,” says Mr
Preece. “When you photograph
something from above it puts the
viewer in a position of responsi-bility.
We wanted to make the con-sumer
feel responsible for the pup-py.
We tilted the puppy’s head to a
non-threatening angle, so it isn’t a
wolf looking at you. It is submissive.
And the puppies head sits on the su-permarket
shelf. It is pleading with
you, looking you in the eye, saying
‘Buy me!’”
The new packaging was rolled out
to Andrex’s full global range, includ-ing
wipes and children’s products.
The sales rise, which was achieved,
it is worth stressing, despite a plung-ing
marketing budget, proves the bi-omechanical
trigger theories really
do manipulate consumers.
HAZARD WARNING
So what should brand managers
take from this tale? The first les-son
is that there ought to be logic
behind artistic packaging consid-erations.
But there are other issues
too. Changing packaging comes with
a hazard warning.
Chris Lumsden, managing di-rector
of brand consultancy Good,
points out: “Because customers are
often looking for cues when rushing
through a store, often on autopilot,
changing a pack too much can lead
them to miss a redesigned brand
and choose another. This links to
the backlash some brands face when
they change their packaging. Trop-icana
redesigned and then reverted
back to its previous look. Familiarity
is the greatest tool a brand can use
to ensure recognition.”
Any changes you make need to
overwhelm this downside.
Another rule is that “evidence”
isn’t always reliable. Tony Nunan,
managing director of Leeds-based
design agency Visuality, says: “If
your strategy is based on feedback
from conventional research, such
as focus groups and interviews,
it’s probably flawed. Brand recog-nition
in supermarkets takes place
in a fraction of a second. It’s a sub-conscious
process and, because of
this, it’s almost impossible for re-spondents
to describe.
“If you want to understand visi-bility,
you need to use techniques,
such as eye-tracking, which get
closer to what’s really happening
at the point of purchase.”
He adds another caveat: “There’s
a widespread misconception that
if you make something look dif-ferent,
it will stand out from the
crowd. This is often untrue. Shop-pers
learn how to recognise brands
and categories using a small num-ber
of visual cues. If you change
these cues, without managing the
change properly, there is a real
chance you’ll render your pack
invisible.”
In conclusion: you can use bio-mechanical
triggers and strong de-sign
logic to plan an attack on the
consumer’s brain. But there is an
internal logic to the supermarket
to consider as well. If you want to
inveigle consumers into snapping
up your products, you’ll need to be
master of every factor.
If you want to understand visibility, you
need to use techniques, such as eye-tracking,
which get closer to what’s really
happening at the point of purchase
Image: Getty
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Unusual materials are playing
an increasing role. Design agency
Sedley Place created a new look
for Johnnie Walker whisky. Sedley
Place director Ron Cregan says:
“Diageo’s Johnnie Walker Willow
Pattern Limited Editions, created
for the Johnnie Walker houses in
Shanghai and Beijing, are made of
porcelain in a direct homage to the
Willow Pattern porcelain so belov-ed
by previous generations. The
bottles have a weight in the hand
which is also cool and smooth to the
touch because of the porcelain fin-ish.
Other limited editions, such as
Johnnie Walker’s Epic Dates range,
feature inset pewter labels and
engraved bottles.
“When packaging uses the finest
materials in this way, it assumes a
visual language that conveys brand
aspects such as quality, authenticity,
heritage and sheer pleasure.”
Coley Porter Bell’s revamp of
Perrier-Jouët took a similarly re-strained,
but outré, route. “The
subtle artisan craftsmanship evi-dent
on the print finishes, neck foils
and monogram seals were refined to
reflect the brand’s distinctive col-our
palette and enhance the luxury
codes in a subtler, more harmonious
way,” says Coley Porter Bell chief ex-ecutive
Vicky Bullen.
Ostentation is out. Restrained,
refined, unique and subtle are in.
Naturally, the lower-tiered prod-ucts
will follow suit, meaning the
luxury brands will soon need a new
iteration. But for now, that’s the
dominant ethos.
Luxury Goods
TOP-DOWN
TRENDS
SET PACE
Luxury goods showcase the latest
techniques in packaging. So what
is the luxury industry telling us right
now? Charles Orton-Jones reports
If you want to steal ideas
for outstanding packag-ing,
then the luxury sec-tor
is the place to start. After all,
if brands can’t convince buyers to
pay often outrageous premiums,
then they die.
Luxury brands have the biggest
budgets, the most sophisticated
consumers and the most ambitious
designers. If an idea works here, it is
just a matter of time before it filters
down to the mid-market.
So what are the latest trends in
luxury goods? Who better to ask
than Alison Church, event director
for easyFairs’ Luxury Packaging
Exhibition, the UK’s only luxury
packaging event.
“The packaging industry is con-stantly
evolving. When I first started
working on the show, sustainability
was topping the agenda,” she says.
“It’s still important, but a key driver
behind innovation in the last year
has been pack differentiation.
“Shelf stand-out has always been
paramount, but increasingly brands
are looking at how to engage with
their customers beyond the shelf,
which has led to an increase in
companies creating an experience
around their product through their
packaging, and linking closely with
their social media and marketing
strategies. As a result, packaging
innovation to some extent is being
driven by consumers who directly
interact with brands to influence
their decisions. In general, brands
today are listening and initiatives
such as personalised packaging
are booming.”
One-offs and collaborations are a
reliable way to generate this sense
of uniqueness. Hayley Ard, head of
consumer lifestyle at trend watch-ing
consultancy Stylus, points to
Dom Pérignon champagne’s Sep-tember
2013 collaboration with
American artist Jeff Koons as a
prime example.
“Koons designed a range of viv-idly
coloured, limited-edition gift
sets for the French house’s vintage
champagnes, influenced by his
playful, bubble-shaped sculptures,”
she says. “The packaging, which
aligns the champagne bottles with
inflatable toys, appeals strongly to
the youth market. A bottle of Rosé
Vintage 2003 is concealed in an
eye-catching adaptation of Koons’
Balloon Venus sculpture – a sea of
reflective curves in bright fuchsia.”
BARE TYPOGRAPHY
Another trend is stripped back ty-pography.
Ms Ard says: “As consum-ers
overwhelmed by product choices
tune out loud signals, luxury brands
are promoting packaging with pared-down
typography, sparse layouts and
short strings of numbers. Sophisti-cated
monograms replace logos. This
strategy appeals to consumers who
value humble brand transparency
and who choose products based on
essential information.”
Increasingly
brands are looking
at how to engage
with their customers
beyond the shelf
Image: Getty
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EDITION #0288
PA Commercial Feature
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EDITION #0000
Robots, reality and revolution
The largest plant in Poland owned by a global-brand
manufacturer of household cleaning products has
averaged more than one addition to the production team
every week for the last two years. What makes this trend
noteworthy is the fact that all 124 new arrivals are robots
Klaus Petersen
Director of marketing (EMEA)
Mitsubishi Electric Factory Automation
If you thought robots were the fu-ture,
you would be wrong; they are
the present. As evidenced by this
consumer goods facility outside
Warsaw, robotic automation is a
feature of the packaging here-and-now.
More surprisingly, robots not
only represent current operating
technology, they are also green.
When you look at robotics from an
energy perspective compared with tra-ditional
workforce personnel, in a sim-ple
head-to-head scenario, the carbon
footprint numbers add up in favour of
automation, concludes Klaus Petersen,
director of marketing in Europe, the Mid-dle
East and Africa (EMEA) for Mitsubishi
Electric Factory Automation
“Just by comparing the average foot-print
of a complete working day,including
human commute time, the robot emits
half the CO2. And we have not even con-sidered
that a Mitsubishi robot could do
more than 100 pick-and-place move-ments
a minute, making it several times
more productive than a human being. At
the end of the day, the CO2 footprint of
the produced goods would be many times
lower using the robot for repetitive tasks.
Of course, there are both job security
fears and broader sustainability consid-erations
to take into account with auto-mation,
he acknowledges.
“People are often scared that robotics
are a cause of job losses in the industry.
But when you look at the capabilities of
a robot compared with a human worker,
the core strengths are completely differ-ent,”
he says.
“For humans, repetitive work typically
leads to employee dissatisfaction and
often a shortfall in production quality.
But for a robot this is the perfect envi-ronment.
Therefore, you’d rather have a
robot doing the repetitive work, and your
workforce contributing to optimising
processes and harnessing their ability
to adapt to new situations.
Automation is high on the
investment agenda for the
food and beverage sector,
which accounts for 70 per cent of all
packaging consumed within the UK
“If we can combine all these aspects,
we actually see the use of robots creates
a win-win situation by enabling the work-force
to add value with their true skills
– creating a better, happier and more
productive working environment – with
performance against sustainability tar-gets
also enhanced through reductions
in the carbon footprint of the manufac-turing
company.”
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Automation is high on the investment
agenda for the food and beverage sec-tor,
which accounts for 70 per cent of all
packaging consumed within the UK and
promises the largest growth potential for
the industry.
Consumer desire to spend less,
reduce waste and have fresh food for
longer has led to market opportunities
in this sector, says Mitsubishi Electric
Factory Automation’s original equipment
manufacturer (OEM) UK solutions man-ager
Jon Sumner.
“The key trend relates to reducing
food waste in the home,” he says. “A re-port
by WRAP [Waste & Resources Action
Programme] suggested that the cost of
discarded food to each UK household
is around £270 a year, and concerns
have driven several changes within the
packaging industry, such as re-sealable
packs, greater variety in portion and
pack sizes, plus modifi ed atmosphere
packaging (MAP). All are designed to
prolong the useable life of fresh food.”
Food and beverage, in general, is
facing a slew of commercial challenges,
such as slow throughput, lack of profi ta-bility,
product failures, wastage, excess
stock, poor information fl ow, plus issues
with shipping deadlines, traceability and
regulatory compliance.
In response, the key benefi ts and ca-pabilities
of integrated, intelligent auto-mation
solutions include:
Process improvement and
visualisation;
Quality management;
Integration into business appli-cations;
Reporting and analysis, track
and trace;
Regulatory compliance;
Energy saving and optimisa-tion;
plus
Manufacturing intelligence.
CARBON FOOTPRINT: ROBOT V HUMAN
The upshot is that traditional mechan-ical
packaging machine solutions are
being replaced with the latest servo and
robotic solutions, which by their very nature
increase production rates, while simulta-neously
reducing waste and energy usage.
WINDS OF CHANGE
Addressing the major manufacturing
metrics of energy saving, productivity
(cost allocation) and quality, all within
an overarching sustainability frame-work,
is the automation game chang-er
for packaging, according to Jamy
Michel, director vertical industries,
food and beverage consumer packaged
goods (FB CPG), EMEA, at Mitsubishi
Electric Factory Automation.
“Intelligent automation can improve
the effi ciency of your production lines,
respond faster to new market demands
and maximise the usage of resources. All
benefi ts are achievable and deliverable
with full visibility, to enrich society with
performing technology,” he says.
If you think such a scenario sounds
more dream than reality, again you are
wrong. Mitsubishi Electric robots are al-ready
handling 4.1 billion biscuits every
year, plus its equipment is producing and
packaging 15,000 tons of salty snacks,
with 2.7 billion litres of dairy products
delivered in 2013.
Furthermore, the success stories are
not simply about speed and volume,
effi ciency and consumption. An estab-lished
European name in cakes and
pastries saw its daily cookie production
increase from 12,000kg to 22,000kg,
accompanied by a 20 per cent uplift in
quality. In the UK, a major dairy com-pany
not only reduced energy usage
by up to 173kW per hour using Mit-subishi
Electric variable speed drives,
programmable logic controllers (PLCs)
and human-machine interfaces (HMIs),
so saving on running costs, but the op-eration
was also able to down-rate the
pump motors considerably, saving on
material costs, too.
With multiple performance benefi ts
and resource savings, plus long-term
customer support enhanced by back-wards
compatibility of new system
releases, Mitsubishi Electric is encour-aging
packaging companies to think
about lifecycle management in terms of
“solutions”, not just products.
“Cultural change is as irresistible as
the technology driving it,” concludes Mr
Michel. “Forced to manage the big shift
to a more sustainable business model,
the packaging industry sits on the cusp
of a revolution – and the revolution will
be automated.”
MITSUBISHI ROBOT
Average power consumption = 500W
In Germany 1kWh = approximately 600g of CO2
emissions (Statista GmbH) – but, let’s be a bit
more pessimistic and assume it produces a
whole 1kg.Therefore, with 240 8-hour working
days a year, robot footprint = 0.5kW x 8h x
240 days x 1000g/kWh = 960kg of CO2
HUMAN WORKFORCE
Person is living 20km from the factory and driving
there and back in a car that produces 188g/km.
Therefore, with 240 8-hour working days a year,
human footprint = 188g/km x 20km x 2 x 240
days = 1805kg of CO2
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Healthcare
Source: Aston University
1 in 20 patients in the UK take more than 10
types of medicines a day
Source: MTS Medication Technologies
40% of the 40 billion injections each year
are with reused syringes without
sterilisation
Source: World Health Organization
12:00pm
Smart packaging can help patients take correct and
regular doses of medicines, avoiding complications, even
death, as well as costly waste, writes Celestine Cheong
he says. But with so many different
types of packaging and the excess
amount of information on such a
small surface, it is no wonder pa-tients
are left completely bewildered.
ICONS POINT TO FUTURE
Simon Wight, managing direc-tor
of Greenwich Design, says ico-nography
– disseminating content
using images – can alleviate the
confusion. “In the EU, many health
companies are trying to ensure that
their packaging works across mul-tiple
languages,” he explains. “The
main barrier is language, whereas
numbers and visuals are universal.”
Greenwich Design recently rede-signed
the entire range of packaging
for Milton Healthcare.
However, Mr Wight cautions
against the overuse of iconogra-phy.
“These are only worth having
if they’re universally understood,”
he says, stressing the need for
more market research on usage.
Advice to refer to a website is
another factor that contributes to
non-adherence. “Being redirected
to a website requires taking an extra
step, which is unnecessary,” he says.
“Customers will choose to believe
what’s on the pack first. The short-cut
here is that it gives the patient
the information on dosage quickly.
The battle of psychology is done
in milliseconds.”
Solving the issue of non-adher-ence
is not easy. The amount of
space allocated for on-pack com-munications
can be split into three
categories: 50 to 60 per cent for
the necessary legalese, 25 to 30
per cent for a company’s own mes-saging,
leaving only 10 per cent to
the designer.
EU REGULATION
In addition, any medicines listed
as certain types of “food” will have
to comply with new EU laws after
December 13 this year. This new
regulation will see, for example,
the “best before” date printed on
one area of the label in large legi-ble
print. The new labels must also
highlight allergens, such as milk
and nuts, listed in an appendix to
the regulation.
The changing colour
of a syringe can warn
patients when
the needle is unsafe
When sick we may turn to
medicines to get better.
However, swallowing pills
and downing bitter liquids to over-come
illness can be cumbersome,
even at the best of times, let alone
remembering guidelines on when
to take the next dose. But skipping
doses, doubling up or not complet-ing
prescriptions is commonplace.
This non-adherence to guide-lines
can lead to undesirable out-comes,
such as recurring infections
or side effects.
In the UK, three people die every
day from asthma. The Royal College
of Physicians states that poor ad-herence
to recommended asthmas
medication or action plans is part
of the cause. This non-adherence to
prescribed medicine sees the NHS
waste £500 million a year. The fig-ure
is compounded by 50 per cent of
patients who do not take their medi-cation
correctly. In the EU, 200,000
deaths occur each year because of
missed doses of medication.
“£500 million is conservative,”
says James Murray, sales and mar-keting
director at MTS Medication
Technologies, on the cost of non-ad-herence
in the UK. “It does not in-clude
the measurement of wasted
drugs, people who don’t take them,
additional costs such as people stay-ing
in hospitals and medication that
is out of date.”
In the United States, this cost is
estimated at a staggering $100 bil-lion
to $300 billion a year, which
stands at three times NHS England’s
entire budget. This includes costs
from avoidable hospitalisations,
nursing home admissions and pre-mature
deaths.
According to MTS Medication
Technologies, one in twenty patients
in the UK take more than ten types of
medicines each day. “The more types
of medicine a patient needs to take,
overall the less compliant they can
become with respect to their dos-age
timings,” says Mr Murray, on
the overwhelming choice of medi-cines
available, each with a different
dosage cycle.
“Patients are at their most vul-nerable
when they are about to take
their medicine for the first time,”
Take Medicine
£500m wasted in the NHS each year
through non-adherence to prescribed
medicines
200k deaths in the EU a year are because
of missed medication
Source: World Health Organization
World Design Impact Prize, which
is awarded every two years by the
International Council of Societies
of Industrial Design.
Packaging alone is not the solu-tion.
It may be that both graphics
and structure play a role. “Around
200,000 patients in the UK re-quire
further support to take their
medication correctly – above and
beyond existing adherence sys-tems,”
says Mr Murray of MTS
Medication Technologies.
Consideration of the use of bi-ometrics,
such as with the new
Apple Watch, can focus on basic pa-rameters,
including exercise, diet,
stress and medication scheduling.
Then there are “clever card” tech-nologies
which prompt and record
medication adherence. As soon as a
blister is opened a message is sent to
a cloud-based system letting carers
and pharmacists know the medica-tion
has been accessed.
It is not just medicine that is
subject to non-adherence issues.
The World Health Organization es-timates
up to 40 per cent of the 40
billion injections administered each
year are delivered with syringes re-used
without sterilisation, allowing
diseases such as Hepatitis B and C
as well as HIV to be transmitted and
resulting in 1.3 million in deaths.
This global healthcare problem
has led to a redesign in syringe pack-aging
by the University of Hudders-field
where the changing colour of
a syringe can warn patients when
the needle is unsafe. Like an opened
carton of milk, the syringe’s expo-sure
to air, specifically carbon diox-ide,
activates an ink after a minute,
turning the label to red. This alerts
patients to the fact that the sy-ringe
has been used once and is no
longer sterile.
The design, developed by Dr
David Swann, received the 2014
14.
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FUTURE OF PACKAGING ONLINE:
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2014
Campbell, Dell’s director of pro-curement
for packaging. “Wheat
straw is the leftover canes after the
wheat grains are harvested and is
treated mostly as waste. In some
countries farmers burn it, contrib-uting
to air pollution.”
Mr Campbell maintains that the
boxes look and perform like regular
cardboard, and at end of life can be
channelled into existing recycling
streams. This is important when it
comes to customer disposal of pack-aging
as the infrastructure must be in
place to support effective recovery.
Consumer-facing messaging is
key here, notes WRAP’s director of
sustainable food systems Richard
Swannell. “For packaging, one of the
most successful interventions has
been the on-pack recycling label.
This gives people at home clear in-formation
about how to recycle the
packaging in their cupboards and
helps keep material flowing within
the economy,” he says.
Dr Swannell has yet to be
convinced of the benefits of com-postable
packaging, feeling it offers
less “closed-loop” potential than
recycling in regard to the use of re-sources.
Mark Shayler, an eco-pack-aging
expert, is inclined to agree.
“The consumer likes the idea of
compostable packaging, but the re-ality
is it doesn’t compost effective-ly
yet. You need tightly controlled
commercial composting facilities
to make it work,” he says.
Mr Shayler says the rise of flexi-ble
packaging, such as plastic bags,
sweet wrappers and laminated
pouches, also presents a recovery
challenge. Data sourced from pack-aging
compliance scheme operator
Valpak indicates flexible packaging
makes up 32 per cent of consumer
plastic packaging in the UK, with
virtually all of it – 556,000 tonnes –
ending up in landfill.
“Laminated packaging, such as
pouches, are difficult to deconstruct
to the core constituents of alumi-num
and polyethylene; all you can
do is downcycle them into a very
inferior quality fibrous product that
mixes those two things together,”
he says.
REPROCESSING TECHNOLOGY
Moves are now underway to ad-dress
this. Nestlé and Unilever are
among a group of companies back-ing
a project to make plastic-based
flexible packaging more circular
through the use of new barrier pol-ymers,
novel packaging designs and
smarter reprocessing technology.
The project is being partly govern-ment
funded by Innovate UK and
will run for two years. Industry-wide
guidelines will be drawn up as part
of the output.
“We will be demonstrating im-proved
recyclability for flexible
packaging used for both Nestlé and
Unilever products,” says Liz Mor-rish,
principal consultant at project
lead Axion Recycling. Innovate UK’s
lead specialist for sustainability Dr
Mike Pitts reckons it could become
a circular-economy blueprint.
“We’re very excited about it as it
contains all the nodes of the new
network needed to close the loop on
this form of packaging,” he says.
End of Life
The premise
of a circular
economy is to design
out waste from
industrial systems by
keeping raw materials
and products in use
for as long as possible
WHAT GOES AROUND
COMES AROUND…
New forms of packaging can extend its life or
upgrade the material for another use, as
Maxine Perella discovers
While packaging waste has
always represented a val-uable
material resource in
its own right, more could be done.
According to the Waste Resources
Action Programme (WRAP), in 2012
the UK recycled 61.4 per cent of its
packaging, falling short of the EU-27
average of 64.6 per cent. It currently
sits in eighteenth position in terms
of member-state performance.
A new business agenda – the cir-cular
economy – is now emerging
which could accelerate action on
this front. The premise of a circular
economy is to design out waste from
industrial systems by keeping raw
materials and products in use for as
long as possible. It is forcing com-panies
to rethink their approach so
they retain more of the value of the
material and energy inputs that go
into products.
For packaging, this might mean
developing products that can be
upcycled rather than downcycled.
Unlike recycling, which generally
downgrades materials, upcycling
can retain or increase the original
value of the packaging for its next
use. Carlsberg Group has targeted
upcycling as one of the core strands
of work under its Carlsberg Circular
Community, a supplier-led initiative
that aims to optimise the beer mak-er’s
packaging for smarter reuse.
“We want to move away from our
products having a ‘lifetime warran-ty’
and towards them having an ‘af-terlife
warranty’,” explains Simon
Hoffmeyer Boas, senior corporate
social responsibility manager at
Carlsberg Group. He points to an
example of upcycling being “when
a refillable bottle is washed and re-filled,
thus becoming a beer bottle
once again, or when a can is sent
back into the marketplace as a new
product thereby retaining the value
of the aluminium”.
In some markets, Carlsberg al-ready
offers refillable glass bot-tles
which in some cases are used
more than 30 times. “Return rates
do differ by markets, according to
how efficient the reverse logistics
setup is, how well the consumer is
educated in terms of returning the
used packaging and to what extent
the incentive structure is defined,”
Mr Hoffmeyer Boas says.
USER EXPERIENCE – PROBABLY
While some of Carlsberg’s inno-vation
work on this front probably
goes unnoticed by the consumer,
such as optimisation of inks and
lacquers on packaging, on-pack ed-ucational
messaging can give good
visibility. However, any sustaina-ble
alternatives must deliver added
value to the customer – factors such
as aesthetics, convenience and user
experience all come into play.
The company is mindful of this
challenge going forward. “We are
looking into rethinking our packag-ing
materials and introducing inno-vations
that challenge the bounda-ries
of today’s beer packaging. These
would have a different look and feel
that would be very apparent to con-sumers,”
says Mr Hoffmeyer Boas.
Meanwhile, computer giant Dell
has a goal of creating 100 per cent
waste-free packaging by 2020. It has
taken a different approach, one that
draws on the principles of biomim-icry
which uses nature as a template
for material design. The company is
making packaging from composta-ble
and recyclable materials, such
as bamboo, mushrooms and wheat
straw. In the case of wheat straw, the
production process uses 40 per cent
less energy and 90 per cent less wa-ter
than traditional methods.
“We incorporate wheat straw in
the production of corrugated box-es
for laptop products, mixing the
straw with recycled paper fibres to
create the cardboard,” says Oliver
32% of UK consumer plastic packaging is
flexible bags, wrappers and laminates,
virtually all of which ends up in landfill
Source: Valpak
20% cost reduction per hectolitre of beer
sold to consumers would be possible
across all markets by shifting from
disposable to reusable glass bottles
Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Paris Christmas
trees made from
recycled bottles
Image: Getty
61.4% of all UK packaging used by
households and industry was
recycled in 2012
Source: WRAP
