6 Packaging Trends to Watch

If you had previously rejected packaging as a market to expand into, you might want to look again.

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If you have been eyeing the packaging market but haven’t been sure whether there is really an entry for commercial printers, a recent report from Infotrends, a division of Keypoint Intelligence, may provide the answer. According to the 2017 Production Workflow Software Road Map, the packaging market is changing, and in ways that benefit printers – digital printers, in particular.

The 2017 Road Map reflects the fact that many of the traditional barriers to the packaging market for commercial printers –digital print quality, run lengths, substrate limitations, and production speeds to name a few – have fallen. Options have expanded significantly, resolving many of these limitations.

“The technology improvements in inkjet devices enable packaging speed, color, and substrate requirements to be hit in the digital production environment,” notes Pat McGrew, director of InfoTrends’ Production Workflow Service. “There are also a growing number of tools for adding variable and segment information in a seamless workflow.”

But the bigger change is in the marketplace itself. McGrew notes that the rise of Internet-based businesses has created a thriving market for short-run niche packaging that did not exist even a few years ago. She gives the example of BarkBox, which mails a customized selection of dog toys and treats to dog lovers on a monthly basis. BarkBox knows how many dogs are in the home and what size the dogs are, and over time, they learn the owner’s preferences. BarkBox then begins to personalize its packaging to reflect these preferences.

This does more than show off BarkBox’s ability to use technology. It cements their customers’ long-term loyalty. “We have passed the point where companies are simply dropping products into padded envelopes,” McGrew says. “When you look at the needs of the Internet-driven market and marry them up to the ability to produce digital packaging (including corrugated, folding carton, flexible packaging, and their associated labels), the market is changing as it moves forward.”

Here are six trends from InfoTrends’ 2017 Road Map that McGrew sees driving packaging in 2017:

1. Rise of digital with more custom packaging: more SKUs

Customized packaging means more SKUs (stock keeping units). Because SKUs and their associated bar codes are critical to managing product production workflows and warehouse inventory, printers wanting to move into short-run packaging production need workflow components that can handle thousands of product SKUs, tracking production from job onboarding through shipping and delivery.

“You don’t want the produce boxes for Costco ending up at BJs,” McGrew explains, “and with customized packaging, you can end up producing boxes and pallet skirts that are not only specific to the store chain, but to the individual store. It’s the same for producing customized or personalized boxes for product delivery to the home or office. It takes a robust, industrial workflow capable of knowing where every package is in the workflow.”

McGrew says to watch companies like Kiwiplan, EFI (Digital Storefront and the Packaging Productivity Suites), and Esko, which have years of experience in managing digital packaging workflows and which have grown their product offerings with the needs of digital producers. “These products manage multiple SKUs down to a discrete level,” she says. “If you are going to work in the packaging space, you will have to take a harder look at workflows like these (if you are not using them already).”

2. Shorter runs – less warehousing

Run lengths are dropping, whether in book publishing, magazine printing, and now package printing. A lot of what drives shorter runs is the just-in-time mentality that continues to grow. “You’d think JIT was already mature, but it’s still moving into different market verticals,” McGrew continues. “Among most packaging producers, there is a long-term goal of reducing warehousing costs and footprints. Replacing ‘print and warehouse’ with ‘print and deliver’ is where they really want to go. Digital is great for that.”

3. Creating the retail-ready packaging experience

Another major trend is growth in retail-ready packaging. In these applications, the package doubles as an attractive on-floor display. Not only are these displays becoming increasingly creative, but they are becoming increasingly customized. Many are being designed specifically for retail chains and even individual store locations.

As an example, McGrew points to display products created by Ghelfi in Sondrio, Italy. Ghelfi, a packaging specialist producing 65 million square meters of cardboard every year, is using both an HP PageWide Web Press T1100S (110-inch simplex inkjet) and an HP PageWide Web Press T400S (42-inch simplex inkjet) to produce boxes that are both stackable and that serve as billboards for the customer’s product.

“Their customer wanted a way to make the floor display more attractive than just brown boxes with their logo,” says McGrew. “It was a huge success, and now it’s a customized product Ghelfi produces on a regular basis. As retail packaging grows, we expect this type of thing to become a much more interesting opportunity.”

As packaging starts looking and acting more like billboards, workflows need to change to manage the additional touchpoints required for customized packaging. Much of this work can be done using standard print MIS systems, but packaging workflows (especially those for personalized products) are beginning to mature beyond their traditional capabilities. “As we see more and more post-print corrugated, those workflows will be driven to expand pretty quickly to account for more customization,” adds McGrew.

Retail-ready packaging is also being driven by changes in how businesses want to package and deliver their products at the local level. For some clients, pre-print (roll liner printed and married to the corrugated) will continue to be the process of choice, while post-print (printing directly on corrugated) is on the rise.

McGrew notes that even smaller printers have the opportunity to design and produce truly unique packaging that differentiates their customers at a level never before possible. She gives several examples from the marketplace, including:

  • Corrugated mailers delivering t-shirts that, once opened, turn into hangers you can hang the t-shirts with. 
  • Personalized packaging for bottled beauty products that can be designed by the person buying the products (whether for themselves or as a gift).
  • A unique coffee delivery system created by a coffee vendor for making deliveries in its downtown area.

“The vendor was using the heavy paper delivery units, and it wasn’t working well, plus it wasn’t the image they wanted,” McGrew explains. “So they commissioned a local printer to create a unique cup delivery system.” In addition to delivering the coffee, the system doubles as a billboard to advertise the business. The vendor changes the designs on the carrier every month, and now they are investigating the idea of selling advertising on the carriers, as well.

4. The rise of smart packaging

From adding barcodes and QR Codes and augmented reality (AR) to packaging made to fit the product specifically, InfoTrends points to smart packaging on the rise.

McGrew points to products like the CMC CartonWrap and Box on Demand that allow marketers to wrap down to the size of the package on an ad hoc basis. “These are the kinds of solutions we will be watching very carefully,” she says. “We have all received boxes with air pillows and other stuffing, and deep inside there was a single item almost lost in the packing material. Products like CartonWrap and Box on Demand allow boxes to be created based on the size of the content. That saves waste in the box-making process, waste at the receiver side, and keeps the cost of packing and shipping appropriate to the product. In doing so, these products help customers meet both environmental and budgetary goals.”

Then there is growth in augmented reality (AR). AR has been nipping at the sidelines for awhile, but it’s now front and center. Products like Wheaties and Trix, Heinz ketchup, Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, Doritos, and Lego have been leaders in this area. “Do a quick Internet search for ‘augmented reality for packaging’ and you will find videos and case studies for most major product segments,” says McGrew.

5. Emergence of new packaging workflow solutions

Watch the emergence of new and expanded packaging workflow solutions both in the hybrid (analog and digital) environment as well as in the fully digital ones. “There is a lot of work being done by workflow producers,” says McGrew. “Keep an eye on Esko, EFI, and KiwiPlan as they add features, but also watch the Print MIS providers and even some of the commercial players with niche solutions in content and asset management who could become valuable allies for packaging printers wanting to offer highly segmented content.”

6. Brands tilt to digital for speed to market and customization because quality has arrived

“We saw some of this in 2016, but we think we’ll see a lot more this year,” says McGrew. “Look at Komori in Japan, which recently created a set of perfume boxes printed on their digital ISD29 device. The boxes needed to be retail ready because, before launch, [the brand for which they were producing them] wanted to do A/B testing. It created multiple designs and put them into department stores, then did focus groups to see which ones work best. Now they’ll put the top design onto their conventional press and do the final runs. That is something we think we’ll see a lot more of around the world.”

With digital printing more widely accepted in the packaging marketplace, the opportunities continue to grow. A lot of these are opportunities simply didn’t exist five years ago. In particular, the intersection of the growth of Internet-based marketing and the growth of customized products is pushing packaging downstream into the niche marketplaces and local markets. So if you had previously rejected packaging as a market that you can legitimately expand into, you might want to look again.