Innovative packaging

“A winning differentiation strategy”

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■  The best performing industrial players know that their packaging creates the first impression of their products. The sensorial effect it creates and the image of quality, lightness, safety or practicality it conveys make packaging an essential element of differentiation, which can be decisive for the consumer.

■  Beyond the perceived quality it conveys, innovative packaging makes it possible to generate a quantity of new products or services: without water-tight packaging, conserves wouldn’t exist, the life span of food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical products would be considerably reduced and distribution circuits wouldn’t have evolved.

■  At a time when the convergence of multi-functional products and standardised design concepts leave way for imagining a future with symbolic, but often cloned products (personal assistants are a good example of this), packaging innovation is a powerful differentiation tool.

■  The economic stakes are considerable; if we consider metropolitan France alone, 15 billion euros of packaging are bought each year by transformers; in the food field, packaging represents the second highest expenditure, after agricultural products.

■  In the packaging field, innovation is ongoing, fed by new base materials, with material treatments providing improved technical (barriers) or decorative techniques. Manufacturing processes are making it possible to streamline or integrate new convenience concepts for the user or distributor (prehensility and easy opening, more flexible packing machines or which enable the design of new shapes, etc.).

■  Added to that are regulations (safety, environment), often legitimate, which are innovation drivers for materials, processes and entire branches.

■  There have been multiple patents in packaging innovation; “clever” solutions discovered by talented inventors as they wander through supermarket aisles. A large number of ideas will remain secret, however, due to a lack of investment, communication, industrial development and technology transfer.

■  This abundance of innovations in France and internationally represents a vast ideas’ market, in which the amount of information is huge and which can be the triggers for innovation projects.

■  Packaging development technical services are faced with a recurrent problem: how to filter, very early on, the mass of information available; which information carries real innovation potential and marks the way for future consumer trends?

■  To meet the needs of all players concerned, Innovation 128 is proposing a new multi-client technological watch programme, the aim of which is to provide them strategic information selected and summed up by the best experts.

Main themes

■  New materials and processes

  • new raw materials and their implementation processes
  • materials and processes to reduce environment disturbances
  • reducing the weight of materials
  • new associations of materials
  • processes bringing about new shapes, aesthetics and convenience concepts

■  Design innovations

  • opening and tamper resistance
  • dosing, pouring and spraying
  • other systems to make tasks easier
  • traceability

■  New packing machines

  • for packaging innovations
  • to improve productivity
  • to improve safety of packaging or hygiene
  • to use lighter materials

■  Analysis and simulation tools

  • mechanical stress (shocks, falls, vibrations)
  • migrations
  • permeability

■  Market data and trends

  • by material (paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, metal)
  • by geographical zone (Europe, North America, Asia)

■  New environment regulations

  • Europe
  • USA
  • Japan