Chapter 1
Packaging Functions
What is Packaging?
Packaging is best described as a coordinated system of
preparing goods for transport, distribution, storage,
retailing, and use of the goods
Introduction
1. The four main functions of a package
Contain
Protect/Preserve
Transport
Inform/Sell
Introduction
2. Definitions of different packaging levels
• Primary package: The first wrap or containment of the
product that directly holds the product for sale.
• Secondary package: A wrap or containment of the primary
package.
• Distribution package(shipper): A wrap or containment
whose prime purpose is to protect the product during distribution
and to provide for efficient handling.
• Unit load: A number of distribution packages bound together
and unitized into a single entity for purposes of mechanical
handling, storage, and shipping.
Introduction
Packaging can have many levels. All levels of the system must
work together
Introduction
3. Packages are often defined by their
intended destination
§ Consumer package: A package that will ultimately
reach the consumer as a unit of sale from a
merchandising outlet.
§ Industrial package: A package for delivering goods
from manufacturer to manufacturer. Industrial
packaging usually, but not always, contains goods or
materials for further processing.
What is Packaging?
- Packaging functions range from technical ones to
marketing oriented ones.
Technical Functions Marketing Functions
contain measure communicate promote
protect dispense display sell
preserve store inform motivate
Technical packaging professionals need science and
engineering skills, while marketing professionals need
artistic and motivational understanding.
What is Packaging?
§ Packaging is an activity closely associated with the
evolution of society and, can be traced back to human
beginnings.
§ The nature, degree, and amount of packaging at any
stage of a society’s growth reflect the needs, material
availability and technology of that society.
What is Packaging?
Milk delivery from glass bottles to a variety of
plain and sterile paper cartons, plastic bottles and
flexible bags. Tomorrow, how milk will be delivered?
• Environmentally acceptable packaging (minimal
waste)
• Choices of petrochemicals, wood pulp, and metal
governed
• The way we buy and consume milk
• Milk delivered in refillable aluminum cans?
Primitive Packaging
People needed containment and carrying devices, and
out of this need came the first “package”.
§ a wrap of leaves;
§ an animal skin;
§ the shell of a nut or gourd;
§ a naturally hollow piece of wood;
§ a clay bowl, the fire-dried clay pots ( the pottery and
ceramic trade).
Primitive Packaging
By 2500 B.C., a hard inert substance in the fire’s remains;
glass beads and figures made in Mesopotamia (today’s
Iraq). About 1500 B.C., the earliest hollow glass objects
appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Forming a hollow glass vessel around a core
From Rome To The Renaissance
§ The Romans in about 50 B.C., the glass blowpipe’s
invention brought glass out of noble households and
temples;
§ The first wooden barrel appeared possibly in the
Alpine regions of Europe, one of the most common
packaging forms for many centuries.
§ The first plastic (based on cellulose), made in 1856.
Petroleum-derived plastics added to the package
designer’s selection of packaging materials.
The Industrial Revolution
The changes increased the demand for barrels, boxes,
baskets, and bags to transport the new consumer
commodities and to bring great quantities of food into the
cities.
Bulk packaging was the rule, with the barrel being the
workhorse of the packaging industries. Flour, apples,
biscuits, liquids, nails and oil transported in barrels.
Packaging served primarily to contain and protect.
The Evolution of New Packaging Roles
The first brand names were inevitably those of the
maker. Schweppes (1792), Perrier (1863), and Colgate
(1873);
The evolving printing and decorating arts applied to
“upscale” packages, many early decorations based on
works of art or national symbols or images;
Early labels: pictures of pastoral life, barnyards, fruit, the
gold medals.
Food Packaging
Fast-food appeared and created a demand for
disposable single-service packaging;
Two factors to influence packaging: public health care
and a rapidly growing trend toward eating out rather than
at home;
Food Packaging
Packaging is important to our food supply, because:
1. is organic in nature (an animal or plant source); and
one characteristic of such organic matter is that it has
a limited natural biological life
2. is geographically and seasonally specific, means
we would need to live at the point of harvest to enjoy
these products, and our enjoyment of them would be
restricted to the natural biological life span of each
Food Packaging
We are no longer restricted in our choice of where to
live. we are free of the natural cycles of feast, proper
storage, packaging and transport techniques means that
we are able to deliver fresh products throughout the year
and throughout the country.
Food Packaging
Some industries could not exist without an international
market (safe packaging); The economical manufacture of
durable goods also depends on sound packaging.
The less-developed countries do not have adequate land
to raise enough food; packaging is perceived to be a
weapon against world hunger.
Waste Management and
Environmental Issues
The sources of waste material
- The consumer sees packaging as that part of shopping
trip that gets thrown away. Hence, packaging is
garbage
- A perception: if only the packaging industry would stop
doing something or, start doing something, all our
landfill and pollution problems would go away;
Waste Management and
Environmental Issues
The four Rs hierarchy and what it means
- Reduce: use the minimum amount of material
consistent with fulfilling its basic function;
- Reuse: containers or packaging components should
be reused;
- Recycle: packaging should be collected and the
materials recycled for further use;
- Recover: to possibly recover other value from the
waste before consigning packaging to a landfill.
Waste Management and
Environmental Issues
Recycling realities
1. Recycling does not occur until someone uses the
material collected
2. Recycled material should be economical. In many
instances, recycled material is more costly, and its
use needs to be supported in some way
3. The process of collecting and regenerating a
packaging material for further use is a complex one
for most materials
The Transport Function
The transport function and examples of transport
modes
§ The transport function entails the effective movement
of goods from the point of production to the point of
final consumption. This involves various transport
modes, handling techniques and storage conditions.
§ There are a number of carrier rules that will influence
package design.
The Transport Function
Typical transport handling and storage information
Truck Rail Aircraft
Cargo ship Storage duration storage conditions
handling methods unitizing methods specific shipping unit
weight considerations stock-picking dimension limits
carrier rules environmentally controlled storage
The Transport Function
§ Transportation and distribution is generally
regarded as an activity that is hazardous to the
product being moved.
§ Packaging contributes to the safe, economical,
and efficient storage of a product.
§ Good package design take into account the
implications of transport and warehousing, not just
for the distribution package and unitized load, but
for every level of packaging.
The Transport Function
“Persona”
§ A good package is said to have a “persona”, or
personality. If the designer has done an effective
job, that persona will appeal to the targeted
audience.
§ The targeted audience itself needs to be identified
and studied. This is the realm of demographics and
psychographics.
