In the last 20 months since Covid-19, there have definitely been a lot of supply issues. When a food packaging manufacturer doesn’t do their due diligence upfront and find out where it’s going to be manufactured at what facility and what kind of line speeds, and do all that work upfront they come up with packages, then you just can’t manufacture or you’re not going to hit line speeds to fill capacity. So for challenges when we are servicing food brands, it’s different from other packing supplies. Because products are touching the packaging that is going to be edible or drinkable, so there is sort of red flags or things to watch out for or pay attention to from a packaging manufacturer’s perspective.
1. Challenges encountered when dealing with small brands
From our experience, when we deal with the larger food manufacturers, they know all the right questions to ask. They really have tested almost everything previously. They know the types of film properties they need, to be successful with their product in their packaging or the packaging that might possibly be made. They can even help to guide us as a manufacturer of the packaging in many of the critical needs, their wants, and desires. Having dealt mostly with these smaller brands and the new and emerging brands over the last 15 months, there are many unknowns and oftentimes they don’t know what they don’t know. In terms of the key attributes that they really need in their package, so as a supplier of packaging, I think it’s critical that you know we ask the right questions whether it’s a flexible supplier, a carton supplier, rigid packaging or corrugate whatever.
2. The right questions we need to ask for the emerging brands
We need to ask the right questions and we need help to guide these companies to make sure whether we have met their needs and that when they go to the market, they don’t encounter problems or issues, etc. For example, when you talk about food packaging as barrier properties, you need to know what’s the product going inside of your package? Is it moisture-sensitive? Does it need to have an oxygen barrier? Will it go stale? Will it dry out? Will UV light affect it? All these things are very important to ask and these smaller brands or emerging brands that are just getting involved in new products, so want to get their product in the market. Sometimes they don’t think about these things. As a packaging supplier, we have to think for them to make sure we ask all those right questions.
3. Test the sustainable films for brands’ shelf life
And we always think it’s better to over-engineer the film, to begin with. We’ve touched a little bit about sustainable films, and more and more packaging is moving into, either paper that’s been around for a long time or bio-based resin films which are more new to the market. We believe the bio-based resins and films continue to be fine-tuned, and they do behave differently than traditional flexible packaging films. So companies need to be aware of that, and our only caution here would be to test the processing of these films in their process, to test shelf life, to test extended shelf lives, and move slowly, and cautiously. I know that you want to avoid any big surprises out in the marketplace with a new product in the new brand. If you do well all of the above things and I believe you won’t make bad ideas about food packaging.
