A lot of companies in the packaging space trying to figure out how to actually test out new packaging, because it can be kind of a challenging process. So what can food companies do is set up effective packaging testing processes?
1. Comply the law is the first thing to do
and what can brands do to stay compliant with local laws and regulations? And in the U.S., there’s about the PFAS ban and packaging which has now passed the U.S. Senate and this will affect most fiber packaging and many plastic packaging as well.
2. Know the latest trend in food package industry
The molded fiber, up until very recently, most of those fiber packages did in fact have some sort of PFAS on them. That’s been a huge issue when that first came out. There’s been a tremendous amount of progress in that space and a lot of the major manufacturers have made a lot of progress and are starting to roll out solutions.
3. Understand the basic questions of the products
About testing, there’s a fair amount of standards out there, that they can test you depending on what they’re looking to do in terms of transportation testing and shell flight testing. And there are international standards that they can test to and labs out there that specialize in that space. What we really have to do is to understand how the product can be used. You know what is that distribution cycle going to look like, what is the shelf life needs, what are you trying to accomplish, and then making sure you’re testing the right thing and matching the real-life distribution.
4. Don’t forget the durability test before shipping
In the durability test, some of the most unsustainable packagings is the packaging that causes the products to be damaged. If that happens, you’ve got to ship out an entire package or item. So make sure that durability is a part of the testing process. No one wants to go through all that manufacturing packaging, shipping ultimately to get it to the consumer and it turns out that can not be used. So certainly packaging protection and product protection have to be paramount. Yes, testing is something we can not ignore in the whole production process. And making sure we do all the above things well to have a perfect package.
