Innovative solutions for a sustainable future Boxing clever with smart products Healthcare packaging designed to save lives P04 P06 P13 19/11/14 #0288 RACONTEUR.NET /COMPANY/RACONTEUR-MEDIA /RACONTEUR.NET @RACONTEUR 1 i f t FUTURE OF PACKAGING THIS SPECIAL REPORT IS AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION BY RACONTEUR MEDIA 61.4 % of all UK packaging used by households and industry was recycled in 2012 SOURCE: WRAP 7 m tonnes of food and drink are thrown away each year by UK consumers SOURCE: WRAP $ 400 bn SOURCE: EY global consumer packaging market rising to $500bn with industrial end-users
Transcript
Innovative solutions for a sustainable future
Boxing clever withsmart products
Healthcare packagingdesigned to save livesP04 P06 P13
FUTURE OF PACKAGING ONLINE: WWW.RACONTEUR.NET/FUTURE-OF-PACKAGING-2014 P03
Overview
Returning home with the shopping, an open-mind-ed consumer approaches
the packaging involved as an intrin-sic and essential part of their pur-chase, something of value and ben-efit, rather than simply a potential “waste” problem. They experience the design, the craft, the manufac-ture. They enjoy the unwrapping; they more than like it, they love it. Sound familiar? No.
For most people, the reality is rather different: nine out of ten consumers worldwide are less than completely satisfied with the prod-uct packaging they encounter; 91 per cent of Canadians have expe-rienced “wrap rage” or frustration with difficult-to-open packs; and four out of ten in the UK actually hurt themselves attempting to ac-cess goods in the last two years.
Demand for packaging is on the rise, however, with global markets forecast to hit $975 billion by 2018. If the general rule of thumb is that resource use and cost attributable to packaging amounts to approx-imately one tenth of the product itself, what would it take for us to learn to love the 10 per cent?
Some myth-busting might help. For example, 88 per cent of people believe food packaging is a problem equal to, or bigger than, food waste itself. Wrong. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign shows annual UK emissions from the packaging (11 million tons of CO2) rank nowhere
near those from food waste (17 mil-lion tons).
Positive benefits need to be re-inforced, as packaging technologist at Marks & Spencer, Simon Oxley, explains: “Product waste has far greater environmental impact than the packaging it comes in. Packaging therefore needs to be designed to keep products as fresh as possible, for as long as possible.”
In response, come packaging solutions dubbed “active”, “smart” or “intelli gent”. These can be de-signed to absorb food odours, re-tard oxygen migration, control in-pack humidity, monitor freshness and issue use-by alerts. All of which added functionality extends shelf life for the retailer, and means the usefulness and value of the packag-ing to the purchaser continues back in the kitchen.
When it does come to disposal and recycling, however, responsibil-ity stretches far beyond individuals, argues Mr Oxley. “In order to give consumers clear direction when it comes to recycling, we need to align the whole packaging supply chain with local authorities and waste re-covery resources – relying on con-sumers to ‘check local’ should not be a long-term option,” he says.
In some cases, major investment is the systemic gamechanger, plain and simple. Novelis has sunk more than $260 million into a plant in Germany for so-called evercan, the first beverage-can material guaran-
teed at least 90 per cent recycled. Also, last year saw the launch of the UK’s first dedicated beverage carton recycling facility, by The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Envi-ronment (ACE) UK.
“Kerbside collection of cartons and UK recycling rates are already increasing,” says ACE UK chief ex-ecutive Richard Hands. “Since the facility opened in September 2013, a further 30 – 7 per cent – of UK local authorities have started collecting.”
PACKAGING PERMUTATIONS
For packaging recycling infra-structure in general, the meteoric growth in omnichannel retailing will also prove a future factor, with multiple purchase, collection and delivery options, plus associated returns scenarios calling for re-verse logistics. A myriad of prima-ry, secondary and transit packaging permutations in play will make supply-chain trade-offs inevitable in terms of economy, efficiency and waste.
For the branding communi-ty chasing differentiation, the temptation is to call for packag-ing makeovers. However, change can bring risk as much as reward, in the experience of Robert Opie, consumer historian and founder of the Museum of Brands, Packag-ing and Advertising, celebrating its 30th anniversary.
“Inherently, the consumer doesn’t really like change. They get familiar with and trust brands, so are suspicious of visual disruption.
Any packaging redesign must be done with caution, in instalments, rather than one massive leap,” he says.
Understanding consumer per-spectives also motivates a more ho-listic approach to design, as Chris Sherwin, head of sustainability at Seymourpowell, explains. “The biggest mistake industry makes is splitting product and packaging de-sign from each other. This leads to a poor, unintegrated experience for consumers. It usually means mon-ey invested in product development and cut in packaging,” he says.
“We should always remember that the stuff, the pack, the com-munications – it’s ‘all the product’ in the eyes of consumers.”
Of course, many innovative and luxurious examples of pack-aging success stories will shortly be experienced around the globe, as gift-giving season arrives – everything from personalised and interactive packaging, to containers that are edible.
Among the boxes and bows there will be wow-factor branding show-pieces, such as Nike Air trainers in a bubble of air or water-resist-ant Festina watches immersed in water. Then, post-New Year revelry, overindulgers will tackle tamperproof caps, courtesy of the healthcare market.
In among all the festivities, spare a thought for the silent majority of more mundane packaging, just doing its job. Learn to love the 10 per cent.
Packaging plays an essential part in selling, but continues to battle a bad image despite growing demand and ingenious innovation, writes Jim McClelland
Publishing ManagerDavid Kells
Managing EditorPeter Archer
Head of ProductionNatalia Rosek
Commissioning EditorJim McClelland
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Packaging solutions can be designed to absorb food odours, retard oxygen migration, control in-pack humidity,
monitor freshness and issue use-by alerts
ELISABETH BRAW
Europe correspondent at Newsweek, she writes regularly about sustainability for Guardian Sustainable Business.
CELESTINE CHEONG
Freelance environment communications specialist,she writes for a range of business and environmental publications.
FELICIA JACKSON
Editor at large of Cleantech magazine and author of Conquering Carbon, she specialises in issues concerning the transition to a low-carbon economy.
JIM McCLELLAND
Sustainable futurist, speaker, writer and social-media commentator, his specialisms include built environment, corporate social responsibility and ecosystem services.
CHARLES ORTON-JONES
Former Professional Publishers Association Business Journalist of the Year, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com and editor of EuroBusiness magazine.
MAXINE PERELLA
Environmental journalist, she writes on corporate sustainability, circular economy and resource risk.
MIKE SCOTT
Freelance journalist, specialising in environment and business, he writes regularly for the Financial Times, The Guardian, Forbes and 2degrees Network.
TAKING THE WRAPSOFF INNOVATION
Image: Getty
$975bnglobal packaging sales forecast by 2018
4%forecast annual growth in world packaging market to 2018
30more local authorities started kerbside carton collection following the opening of the UK’s first dedicated recycling facility
Source: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
95%less energy is needed to manufacture a drinks can from recycled aluminium than to make it from new material
4.2m tonnes are equivalent to filling 8,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools
Source: WRAP
Innovative solutions point to a sustainable packaging future, as Elisabeth Braw reports
These days, residents of Austin, Texas can often be found at a futuristic
trading place, a shop full of tall bins where well-known brands are no-where to be found. In fact, the usual bags and boxes containing the prod-ucts are nowhere to be found ei-ther. in:gredients, which opened its doors two years ago, eschews pack-aging, selling groceries in bulk to customers who bring their own bags and containers.
“Initially some people found it difficult to remember to bring con-tainers, but people learn quickly,” says Josh Blaine, in.gredients’ man-ager. Apparently so, because in.gre-dients get frequent inquiries from would-be zero-packaging shopkeep-ers and earlier this year one opened in Berlin. Like in.gredients, Original Unverpackt raised its initial capital through crowdsourcing and it has gone even further than the Texas store, selling absolutely everything packaging free.
Is this the future of packaging? Given that the average European discards 159kg of packaging material each year, and that developing coun-tries are quickly acquiring European and North American waste-genera-tion habits, reducing the amount of plastic, paper and cardboard used
to hold our purchases has become a serious matter.
Granted, recycling is increasing – most European Union member states meet the EU’s 55 per cent recycling rate – but repurposing waste consumes resources too. Eu-romonitor, a business intelligence firm, reports that growth in bottled water consumption has slowed as a result of consumer concerns over the bottles’ environmental cost. And in a recent report, EY notes that consumer concerns in combi-nation with rising commodity prices have made reducing the amount of packaging a top priority.
RAW MATERIAL PRICES UP
Esben Alslund-Lanthén, a re-search analyst at Sustania, a Copen-hagen-based sustainability think-tank, says: “Solutions that reduce or even eliminate packaging are the ones which will have the biggest im-pact, for sure. But we’re not going to completely eliminate packaging waste and thanks to rising raw ma-terial prices, companies are starting to think about more efficient pack-aging solutions.”
Indeed, zero-packaging is far from the only trend on the ascent. “A lot of the current interest in packaging innovation stems from
the fact that more food is travel-ling greater distances and product integrity is paramount,” explains Professor Frank Dunshea, of the University of Melbourne’s master of food and packaging innovation programme. “Some of the more promising trends are re-usable and recyclable materials, temperature and environment-sensing packaging and innovative materials.”
Over the next 40 years, world food production is expected to grow by 50 per cent. Among the sustain-able packaging food may well travel in are bottles and packaging from Bio-on, an Italian company that makes biodegradable packaging from agricultural waste, or packag-ing from NatureWorks, which uses carbon instead of oil.
And packaging innovation is go-ing beyond food. Replenish’s answer to plastic waste is a pioneering re-fillable spray bottle for detergents. Superstore giant Walmart now sells Replenish’s bottles under the brand name Cleanpath. Computer technology giant Dell, for its part, recently started using plastic made from greenhouse gas emissions.
California-based Newlight makes its AirCarbon plastic by captur-ing greenhouse gasses – currently methane from farms – and mix-ing it with biocatalysts. The result is plastic products that look and behave just like regular ones, but perform a crucial environmental function as well.
The technology isn’t new, but the cost connected with the biocata-lyst had prevented greenhouse gas emission plastics from becoming commercially viable. “Our break-through was building a biocatalyst that was nine times more effective,” says Mark Herrema, Newlight’s chief executive.
Since introducing AirCarbon earlier this year, Newlight has been fighting to keep up with demand. And Mr Herrema sees huge growth potential. “Landfills produce very high volumes of greenhouse gas emissions, as do oil fields that flare gas,” he notes. “We could simply set up production there. It will have a big impact on carbon emissions, but we want to become a new model for carbon emissions altogether. They should be treated as a resource, not a headache.”
In addition to AirCarbon, Dell uses biodegradable foam made from mushrooms to transport its servers and has for the past several years packed some of its products in
cardboard boxes made from bam-boo, which replenishes itself faster than other trees.
But are all the sustainable bottles, boxes and foams missing the point? Helén Williams thinks so, at least as far as food is concerned. “For the past 20 years, we’ve been minimis-ing packaging,” says the environ-mental scientist at the University of Karlstad in Sweden, who special-ises in packaging innovation. “But worldwide the number of house-holds is increasing and households are getting smaller. What we need more than less packaging is packag-ing in different sizes, which will help minimise waste.”
FOOD WASTE
Food is indeed thrown away at an alarming rate; in some coun-tries, up to 40 per cent. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Or-ganization reports that 1.6 billion tonnes of food is wasted each year, releasing 3.3 tonnes of CO2-equiv-alent greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
The answer, argue Dr Williams and other analysts, is for food re-tailers to offer products in different sizes. Several years ago, a Swedish meat company introduced pâté in duo-packs, thus reducing the risk of it being discarded half-eaten. With the family dinner in decline world-wide, food companies are begin-ning to focus more on smaller food packaging sizes.
Which brings us back to Josh Blaine at in.gredients. After having started with 70 per cent packag-ing-free products, the store now reduced the share to 50 per cent. “It’s pretty much impossible for a neighbourhood grocery store to have zero packaging,” he concedes. Still, the inquiries keep coming
WHEN LESS IS MORE
Berlin's Original Unverpackt store
offers nuts and other goods for
sale unpackaged
Image: Getty
7mtonnes of food and drink are thrown away each year by UK consumers of which 4.2m tonnes are avoidable
FUTURE OF PACKAGING ONLINE: WWW.RACONTEUR.NET/FUTURE-OF-PACKAGAING-2014
Lately the versatile mushroom has added an altogether new role to its rep-ertoire – as a packaging ingredient.“Everyone wants to do good things for the planet, but companies make their purcha-sing decisions based on cost and what best protects their product,” says Eben Bayer, chief executive and co-founder of biomaterials company Ecovative. “We offer a product that’s cost competitive and distribution competitive.”Welcome to the new world of pack-aging, where sustainable can also mean competitive. Though the world’s oil supply isn’t going to end any time soon, packaging materials based on renewable raw materials also provide an attractive alternative to petrochem-ical-based packaging foam with brand
names such as Styrofoam. Ecovative’s packaging resembles Styrofoam and contains not just mushroom roots, but also agricultural waste. Using a pioneering process, Ecovative blends the roots with the agricultural waste, which results in a sticky mass that can be shaped into foam-like packaging shapes as well as insulation, even surfboards. The shapes are then heat-treated in spe-cial rooms to prevent the mushrooms from growing. “We had to develop the manufacturing process ourselves,” says Mr Bayer. “Now it’s about getting production to industrial scale.” In a radical departure from traditional packaging, Ecovative’s mushroom packaging can not only be recycled, but also composted, adding nutrients to users’ gardens. According to Esben Alslund-Lanthén of the Danish sustainability think-tank Sustainia, Ecovative’s biggest advantage is its use of agricultural by-products that can’t be used for food production. “The mushroom foam is particularly useful for protective plas-tics, which is primarily used to ensure that products aren’t damaged during transportation,” he says. “And the fact that the foam is biodegradable brings considerable environmental benefits because much of our packaging ends
Sustainability
Case Study
MUSHROOMS NOT OIL
up in the oceans, nature or landfills.”Ecovative customers include comput-er technology company Dell, which uses the foam for its servers, as well as furniture-maker Steelcase, the American home furnishing chain Crate & Barrel and Stanhope-Seta, a UK-based laboratory instrument firm. And according to Mr Bayer, there’s no limit to the company’s growth potential: “If IKEA called tomorrow, yes we could meet their demand. We’d just have to build another plant.” The Swedish furniture retailer may indeed be calling to talk, not just about packaging foam. The reason? Ecovative has developed a second product, one that Mr Bayer predicts will have an even bigger impact. “We’ve discovered a way of making the glue that holds wood panels together without formaldehyde, but with the same or even better qualities than the formaldehyde-based kind,” he says. “And it’s not poisonous.”Still, given that making mushroom foam consumes energy, using less packaging remains an indisputably better option. “Yes, using less packag-ing is better,” Mr Bayer acknowledges. “But human behaviour is hard to change. Even though it’s possible to recycle [petrochemical-based] polysty-rene, very little of it is recycled.” Image: Ecovative
Improvements in digital printing, and the use of packaging to drive in-
tegration between goods and the internet of things, means the tech-nology is now a key to producing “smart” products.
But Paul Young, head of packag-ing services at DHL Supply Chain, warns it is important for companies to understand which problems digi-tal packaging can solve, rather than simply following the trend.
QR codes, for example, have historically been the main form of digital communication on pack-aging and, while there have been some successful uses, there are also limitations.
Jon Wilkins, marketing manager of European Automation, says: “We are reviewing our packaging and, interestingly, we will be dropping the QR codes. Hardly anybody uses them and they’ve had no impact on the customer.”
Mike Banach, senior research manager at Plastic Logic, says he believes that in the short term pack-aging innovation will be focused primarily on labelling for security and prevention of fraud. The Inter-national Chamber of Commerce has estimated that the total economic impact of counterfeiting and piracy in 2015 alone will be between $1.2 billion and $1.7 billion.
“Brand owners are looking for
secure labelling that has some us-er-input mechanism [image sensor or touch pad] and output device [display] integrated on the same tag,” he says. Plastic Logic’s flexible transistor technology is enabling the fabrication of these compo-nents on packaging substrates such as PET or polyethylene terephtha-late. The ability to track high-value goods from development to point of use might have a significant impact on the ability to generate fakes.
FOOD REGULATION
Similar innovation is being driv-en by increased regulation in the food supply chain, especially fol-lowing challenges such as the 2013 horsemeat scandal. Between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of food produced globally never reaches the consumer, often thrown away due to problems ascertaining its freshness. Smart labelling reduces the human-error factor by pro-viding a visual indication of fresh-ness, which crosses language and cultural barriers.
Companies, including ThinFilm and Insignia Technologies, have developed ways of monitoring tem-perature control in the global supply chain. ThinFilm is developing labels that monitor temperature changes during shipping and store the data for later analysis. Insignia Tech-nologies has created labels using
Digital packaging looks set to transform markets, the supply chain and brand-consumer communication, writes Felicia Jackson
BOXING CLEVER WITH DIGITAL
Digital Revolution
temperature responsive pigments that can be easily incorporated into plastic films and inks which then display these colour-changing sensing properties.
This type of innovation could also have a major impact in healthcare, particularly in the developing world, with the distribution of medicines and vaccines where lack of clarity about freshness or temperature changes in transportation can often lead to waste.
Joe Morgan at Matter of Form says: “Medical companies are cur-rently spearheading a revolution in digital pharmaceutical packag-ing with methods such as ‘dial-a-dose’ smart-cap concept for drugs.
This displays the number of times medication is consumed as well as alerting the user when they need to take their dose and even con-necting to healthcare centres to monitor consumption.”
Such innovations make it easier for patients to control their dosag-es, which is becoming increasingly important with ageing populations.
There is no doubt that the best-
known developments in packaging have come about through innova-tion in marketing and brand com-munications. QR codes may have led the way in enabling people to get more information about products, but brand-consumer interaction is now moving further and faster.
DIGITAL-MEDIA CHANNEL
As co-founder of EVRYTHING Andy Hobsbawn points out, the falling costs of technology, com-bined with the mass adoption of mobile devices and ubiquitous broadband connectivity, “enables brands effectively to expand the limited on-pack real estate into the digital world, turning their prod-ucts into an owned digital-media channel, enabling them to develop a one-to-one marketing relationship with consumers”.
Katherine Torrence, global cli-ent engagement director at Red-Works, says: “Traditionally product personalisation was considered to be a high-end marketing tech-nique that catered to the appeal of luxury brands. However, with the evolution of the digital age, several brands can now easily channel and adapt personalisation to the mass market. Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign is perhaps one of the most successful to capture the attention of the world.”
There are other well-known campaigns which have used an aug-mented-reality approach to gen-erate customer interaction. LEGO created a campaign which enabled
customers to scan a barcode and see a 3-D version of their planned build. Heinz made their ketchup label scannable, enabling access to a rec-ipe, list of ingredients and a teaching video. While Appy used Tetra Pak cartons to expand their social media interaction with customers, through customising online photos.
New technologies and new ways of interacting with the customer are highly sought after, and it is this that will drive innovation. Of course, chipsets and active sensor tags may be currently economically challenging for consumer packaged goods. NFC (near-field communi-cation) or RFID (radio-frequency identification) can cost up to 20p a pack, depending on volume, while chipsets using Bluetooth, wi-fi or other active technologies can cost upwards of £6 per unit.
But as Mr Hobsbawn concludes: “The key to the viability of design options is being able to justify the return on investment or ROI. Im-plementing a form of digital trigger on a pack will impact packaging cost to some extent, even if simply to in-clude a URL and call to action, but if a brand considers it in the right way, there is an ROI case to be made.”
Investing in innovation
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With the evolution of the digital age, brands can now easily channel and adapt personalisation to the mass market
Image: Getty
New York music fans create personalised Coke bottles at a Mikky Ekko concert
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carton helping to reduce energy use with-in the supply chain and minimise waste during the packing of pharmaceuticals.
IMPROVING SECURITY
Wherever there is good news of mar-ket growth, particularly involving big-name brands, there are unscrupulous opportunists trading in substandard and illegal goods. And pharmaceutical products and the packaging surrounding them are no exception to this rule.
It is estimated that approximately 15 per cent of the global pharmaceu-tical industry is counterfeit product. This varies widely in developed and developing countries, but it exists everywhere. Healthcare packaging has a critical role to play as a method to authenticate branded products, and enable consumers and government officials to identify genuine versus counterfeit products.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers have indeed acknowledged the role that packaging can play in their overall strategies to protect their customers, as indicated by the fact that the glob-al anti-counterfeit, anti-tampering and authentication market is projected to grow at a rate of 14.1 per cent over the next five years, with authentication technologies performing higher at 16.3 per cent, due to increasing awareness of counterfeit products.
So how do companies utilise their packaging to provide an added layer of protection and identification of counter-feit products? In general, the best solu-tions are multi-layered and deployed throughout the supply chain, from phar-maceutical materials supply to the final packaged product.
Solutions range from “covert” fea-tures for use by customs agencies, au-thorised distributors and other parties with access to high-tech readers or oth-er equipment, to sophisticated “overt” identifiers for those who have to rely on the evidence of their own eyes.
Coding adds another level and from the possible interaction with QR codes, through to expert-level forensic features, the use of multi-layer designs and secu-rity features, brand owners and generic pharmaceutical producers have a num-ber of options in their armoury to protect their products and the end-consumer.
For Essentra, being ahead of the game on the issue of security and protec-
tion is a cornerstone of the company’s success. “We have recognised the im-portance of providing brand owners and patients with the confidence of product authenticity in areas where pharmaceu-tical counterfeiting is a real problem. Our portfolio of authentication technol-ogies is world class and already being deployed in pharmaceutical carton pro-duction in countries such as China,” says Mr Waugh.
In healthcare markets, Essentra’s expertise in printing, inks and pack-aging technologies delivers proven results, whether meeting the needs of the European Union Falsified Med-icines Directive or protecting global brands from counterfeit.
“Counterfeiting of pharmaceuti-cal products is a serious challenge”, says Mr Waugh. “Its importance to the market is reflected in the investments that we have made to develop a sec-tor-leading position in the provision of brand authentication solutions for healthcare packaging.
“Counterfeiters are sophisticated and dynamic, and in order to contin-ue to help our customers defend their brands and protect their patients, we continue to invest and develop new technologies to retain the advantage, as fakers’ abilities evolve. It’s a fight that will probably never end – and we are determined to keep fighting.”
Essentra is a FTSE 250 company and a leading global provider of essential functional components, packaging and securing solutions to a diversified blue-chip customer base. Its packaging business focuses on delivering value-adding innovation, quality and service to customers through a range of cartons, tapes, leaflets, foils, labels and authentication for the healthcare, consumer and specialist packaging, point-of-sale, and paper and board industries. Customers in more than 100 countries are served from facilities operating in ten countries. Essentra recently announced the further significant expansion of its pharmaceutical and health and personal care packaging capabilities, with the proposed acquisition of Clondalkin Specialist Packaging Division.
As the worlds’ population ages we are increasingly relying on health-care products to support us in our later years. Exactly how these crit-ical medicines and goods reach us in safe and secure, yet accessible, packaging, carrying intelligible in-structions and promoting brand confidence is, however, anything but straightforward.
The global pharmaceutical market is predicted to total between $1.135 trillion and $1.235 trillion by 2017. An often overlooked element of this is the packaging that these pharmaceutical products are delivered in to consumers. Estimated to be valued at $78.79 billion by 2018, healthcare packaging plays a vital role in not just the delivery of phar-maceuticals to patients, but also deliv-ery of essential information.
Being both large and highly com-plex, the sector exhibits clear growth patterns, according to Malcolm Waugh, group commercial director at Essentra. “Like many other industries, packaging is experiencing rapid growth in new econ-omies and emerging markets, such as India, China and Brazil,” he says. “An ageing demographic and increased in-cidence of systemic diseases are also strong drivers worldwide”
Globally, the number of “older” peo-ple, aged 60 or over, is expected to more than double from 841 million people in 2013 to over 2 billion in 2050, according to the United Nations. This means that, as a proportion of the world population, more than one in five people (21.1 per cent) will be classified as “older” by 2050. This demographic dynamic calls not just for more product from the pack-aging sector, but different priorities.
Commercial Feature
Taking care to combat the counterfeitersAgeing populations and growing counterfeits are driving the need for innovative packaging solutions, says Essentra
GLOBAL MEGATREND
As Mr Waugh explains: “The ageing population is a global megatrend and is driving both growth and innovation, as users’ needs change within healthcare and the packaging they use.
“It is no longer just enough to demon-strate tamper evidence to consumers; it must be accessible tamper-evident packaging. Nor is printing in small font sizes acceptable any more, as phar-maceutical companies need to provide patients with information and patients seek to understand more about the med-icines they are taking.”
Responsibility to minimise the en-vironmental impact of packaging is another significant and growing factor in innovation programmes and man-ufacturing processes. In healthcare packaging, this can manifest itself via efficiencies that are gained in the sup-ply chain via improvements in product assembly which reduce waste and energy consumption.
Companies are supporting the drive for efficiency through innovations such as Essentra’s Combopack™ where a leaflet is already supplied integrated within the
For Essentra, being ahead of the game on the issue of security and
protection is a cornerstone of the company’s success
HEALTHCARE PACKAGING
pharmaceutical packaging market by 2018
Source: Pharmaceutical Packaging Market – Global Trends & Forecast to 2018
$79bn
Source: IMS Market Prognosis
global pharmaceutical market value
$1.135trn
of the global pharmaceutical industry is substandard or counterfeit productSource: Substandard and counterfeit medicines: a systematic review of the literature
15%
Source: MarketsandMarkets
growth in the value of the anti-counterfeit packaging market by 2019
So often treated as an afterthought, packaging can be integral to the impact and success of a product, as Mike Scott reports
PACKINGA PUNCH
Consumer goods giant Unilever continues its campaign to reduce the organisation’s environmental impact with a new deodorant can that holds the same amount of product as its predecessor, but cuts the amount of aluminium used by around a quarter and halves the amount of propellant gas.By 2020 the company aims to reduce the weight of packaging by one third by using lighter materials, optimising structural and material design, developing more concentrated products, and eliminating unneces-sary packaging. To date it has cut the
weight of packaging per consumer by 11 per cent.Its new deodorant can design, which won the Diamond Award in the 2014 DuPont Packaging Awards, means that 53 per cent more cans fit on to a pallet. This translates into 35 per cent fewer lorries needed to transport the product, saving fuel and greenhouse gas emissions. The company claims the smaller cans are “the first major packaging reduction initiative for aerosol deodorants since they were introduced in the 1960s”. Unilever created a new £20-million production line at its factory in Leeds.
Initially, the cans were used just for its female deodorant brands, but having saved 77 tons of aluminium in a year – enough to make 38,000 bicycles – it extended the new cans to its male range as well.The initiative follows Unilever’s introduction in 2007 of a new formu-lation for Persil washing liquid, which concentrated the same number of washes into a bottle one third the size, resulting in one third of the packaging, one third the water use and only one third the required transport compared to diluted liquids.
At the other end of the scale is Bump Mark, a packaging innovation that has not even gone into production yet, but could in time replace “best before” dates on food.Bump Mark is a “bio-reactive food expiry label” that tells you exactly how fresh your food is simply by running your finger over the label. It uses gel-atine to model the decaying process of food. “As the gelatine decays, it becomes a liquid when it expires,” says Solveiga Pakštaite, who invented the label while studying industrial design at Brunel
University. “If it’s smooth, then you’re good to go, but if you start to feels bumps as the gelatine breaks down, be cautious.”The label has won an award from the James Dyson Foundation and Brunel’s Inclusive Design Award. Ms Pakštaite, 23, has a patent pending on the label, and is in talks with retailers and tech-nology development companies.Food waste is a huge issue as every year consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations
Environment Programme.Ms Pakštaite’s original inspiration was to help visually impaired consumers to know when their food was safe to eat, as currently the only indication is a printed date. But, even though almost 300 million people around the world have some form of visual impairment, she says: “I knew that the solution must appeal to sighted people also, because the sad reality is that new solutions only get implemented if the benefits are useful to the majority.”
In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, one in seven children die from prevent-able diseases, notably diarrhoea, partly because there are no medicines available. Yet, at the same time, it is possible to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola almost anywhere – according to The Economist, more than 36 billion bottles of Coke were sold in Africa in 2008. UK-based design consultancy pi global created AidPod, a packaging and distri-bution programme to treat diarrhoea, for ColaLife, a charity that piggy-backs on the “last mile” of Coca-Cola’s
world-leading distribution network to deliver medicines to remote areas.The AidPod, which won the 2013 DuPont Packaging Award, is a self-con-tained anti- diarrheal kit that tucks between bottles in Coca-Cola crates. The key to the product’s success is that the wedge-shaped kits are large enough to contain a big enough dose of medicine, but small enough not to displace any Coke bottles and thus affect the company’s bottom line. AidPod had to meet strict guidelines covering medication containers. They are securely sealed with a strong film
that can withstand severe impact, maintain pack integrity and prevent contamination. The latest version of the AidPod container has evolved to become part of the kit itself, serving as both a single, measured dose for mixing and as a drinking vessel.In the first 12 months of the trial, 25,000 kits were sold to retailers in Zambia, who sell them on to custom-ers. When the ColaLife trial started in September 2012, no child in the trial areas received the recommended treatment for diarrhoea. One year later, 45 per cent of children did.
DEODORANT CANS
INDUSTRY MARKET SHARE AND VALUE OF PACKAGING PRODUCTS
18%
38%
5%
3%
36%
PACKAGING OUTLOOK
Source: World Packaging Organisation
?
Pharmaceutical products
Beverages
Food
Cosmetic packaging
Other
WORLD PACKAGING CONSUMPTION BY END-USE SECTOR 2013
FUTURE OF PACKAGING ONLINE: WWW.RACONTEUR.NET/FUTURE-OF-PACKAGING-2014
Investments in Innovation Opinion
Do not dismiss packaging as a waste of materials, says Jane Bickerstaffe, director of INCPEN, the Industry Council for research on Packaging & the Environment
SUSTAINABLEPACKAGINGIS NO WASTE
The European Commis-sion’s proposals for future policy on packaging, pub-
lished in July, focus almost exclu-sively on what should be done with packaging at the end of its life. The proposals largely overlook the role that packaging plays in protect-ing food and other goods on their journey from farm or factory into people’s homes.
They also overlook the fact that ten times more resources are used to make products than to make the packaging that protects them. They therefore underestimate the need to ensure that companies choose the most appropriate packaging to prevent product waste.
In the next year or so, the Eu-ropean Parliament and govern ments of EU member states will give their views on the commission’ proposals.
Businesses need to take this op-portunity to brief MEPs and gov-ernment officials to ensure future policy leaves sufficient flexibility for packaging to respond to demo-graphic and lifestyle changes as well as environmental issues.
While environmental considera-tions are very important, companies have to take into account a wide range of variables, including cost and functional requirements, when they decide what packaging to use. In addition they work out the best combination of primary, secondary and transport packaging.
This can be at odds with initia-tives from policymakers who, like members of the public, are often only aware of primary, sales packag-ing and may not grasp that there are inevitable trade-offs between levels of packaging. For example, reducing the weight of sales packaging may mean that secondary packaging has to be increased and vice versa.
Each packaging material has spe-cific properties that provide protec-
tion against different hazards and prevent product wastage in differ-ent ways. Champagne needs a heavy glass bottle, whereas a vacuum skin pack protects and extends the shelf life of red meat; a mobile phone needs a strong board box.
How a piece of packaging is treat-ed at the end of its life is far less important than how it enables the supply chain to operate effective-ly and deliver products in perfect condition. Recycling is not always the right thing to do. It can use more resources than it saves.
In recent years there has been a shift in attitudes. People are more aware of the need to conserve resources, the im-portance of reducing waste, especially waste of food, and the need to reduce energy consumption.
It is good to see a holistic ap-proach receiving so much atten-tion, but packaging manufacturers and retailers have been doing all these things for many years. Un-fortunately, even now, many people still dismiss packaging as a waste of materials.
Importantly, there are two key things to remember:
• Without packaging, well over 90 per cent of the products we buy – all liquids, powders, granules, tissues, all imported foods such as coffee and oranges, let alone fragile, costly items such as computers and televi-sions – would not be available;
• Companies need to be profit-able, and packaging materials cost money and reduce profits, so no business is intentionally going to use packaging it does not need – companies have a strong commer-cial incentive to do more with less.
INCPEN’s members are manu-facturers and retailers from across the supply chain who work togeth-er to promote responsible packag-ing for sustainable supply chains. A top priority for our work in coming months will be to share our research and knowledge with policymakers.
Companies have a strong
commercial incentive to do more with less
WORLD PACKAGING CONSUMPTION BY REGION 2013
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
119%
214%
311%
49%
5 8.5%
68%
77.5%
87%
97%
107%
TOP 10 FASTEST GROWING NATIONAL PACKAGING MARKETS
Turkey
India
Poland
Phiippines
UK FORECAST PACKAGING CONSUMPTION BY END-USE SECTOR 2013-18($ BILLIONS) 20182013
Marketers like to think of themselves as puppet masters. They pull invisi-
ble strings to make consumers leap and dance. The diabolical geniuses of the packaging industry give cre-dence to this. A tweak here, a change of material there and sales can plummet or soar.
Take Andrex. For six years, the Andrex brand of toilet tissue fell. Owners Kimberly-Clark attributed the decline to increased competi-tion. Supermarket own-brands are well made, well marketed and en-joy prime position on the shelves. Maybe Andrex’s reign as the num-
ber-one British brand of loo roll was over.
Enter the packaging team. Design consultancy Elmwood was asked to revamp the Andrex packaging. The result? A 13 per cent rise in volume sales, in the midst of a 50 per cent marketing budget cut. The improve-ment meant sales of other Andrex products rose, such as the premi-um quilted brand, which was up 15 per cent.
How was this achieved? Fortu-nately, Simon Preece of Elmwood is keen to share his secrets. He says the Andrex victory is down to the theory known as biomechanical triggers.
The supermarket is a warzone with thousands of brands fighting for sales. Charles Orton-Jones shows how a brand can win the battle and seize shoppers’ attention
FROM SUPERMARKET SHELF INTO THE SHOPPING BASKET
“We have learnt that humans re-spond in a predictable and consist-ent way to a certain stimulus. The reptilian part of the brain can be triggered at an elemental level. The hormone serotonin can be released by a stimulus; neuropeptides and other hormones too,” he says.
This much is well known. Spi-ders widely trigger revulsion, mint smells a sense of calm, black and yellow – as wasps remind us – will trigger our sense of fear. There are more subtle levels, however.
CUSPS AND CURVES
“We respond to shapes, such as cusps and curves. Cusps are used to trigger danger signals. They get our attention. Disney uses this bril-liantly. The Wicked Witch in Snow White has cusps in her hair, eyes and clothes. A three year old knows she’s evil. The typography for Ma-leficent is composed of cusps,” says Mr Preece.
“Curves, by contrast, make us feel reassured. We are nurtured by curves – our mother’s curves – from an early age. You can build this logic into packaging.”
The challenge for Andrex was to make it stand out. “We invest no emotion in buying toilet roll,” he says. “There is three seconds of thinking and that is it. So how do we get consumers to gravitate towards our product?”
Elmwood went for a curves and cusps combo. “We used cusp marks on the Andrex brand mark, fram-ing it to grab your attention. The cusps make sure the Andrex name
is the first thing you see. Then we emphasise the curves of the pack. We used matte white ink to get rid of the shininess. The old packs were in a reflective waxy polythene pack which was no better than own-brand. We introduced curved window shapes on the pack. This makes the rolls look chunky, but soft to touch.”
The language got a makeover. “We don’t just say ‘white’, we say ‘Classic White’. It sounds like a pre-mium brand. Instead of ‘four pack’ we say ‘Four Famously Soft Rolls’ or ‘Gorgeously Soft Rolls’.”
The layout was decluttered. And finally, the Andrex puppy was given a new look. “We used a technique called ‘above and below’,” says Mr Preece. “When you photograph something from above it puts the viewer in a position of responsi-bility. We wanted to make the con-sumer feel responsible for the pup-py. We tilted the puppy’s head to a non-threatening angle, so it isn’t a wolf looking at you. It is submissive. And the puppies head sits on the su-permarket shelf. It is pleading with you, looking you in the eye, saying ‘Buy me!’”
The new packaging was rolled out to Andrex’s full global range, includ-ing wipes and children’s products. The sales rise, which was achieved, it is worth stressing, despite a plung-ing marketing budget, proves the bi-omechanical trigger theories really do manipulate consumers.
HAZARD WARNING
So what should brand managers take from this tale? The first les-son is that there ought to be logic behind artistic packaging consid-erations. But there are other issues too. Changing packaging comes with a hazard warning.
Chris Lumsden, managing di-rector of brand consultancy Good, points out: “Because customers are
often looking for cues when rushing through a store, often on autopilot, changing a pack too much can lead them to miss a redesigned brand and choose another. This links to the backlash some brands face when they change their packaging. Trop-icana redesigned and then reverted back to its previous look. Familiarity is the greatest tool a brand can use to ensure recognition.”
Any changes you make need to overwhelm this downside.
Another rule is that “evidence” isn’t always reliable. Tony Nunan, managing director of Leeds-based design agency Visuality, says: “If your strategy is based on feedback from conventional research, such as focus groups and interviews, it’s probably flawed. Brand recog-nition in supermarkets takes place in a fraction of a second. It’s a sub-conscious process and, because of this, it’s almost impossible for re-spondents to describe.
“If you want to understand visi-bility, you need to use techniques, such as eye-tracking, which get closer to what’s really happening at the point of purchase.”
He adds another caveat: “There’s a widespread misconception that if you make something look dif-ferent, it will stand out from the crowd. This is often untrue. Shop-pers learn how to recognise brands and categories using a small num-ber of visual cues. If you change these cues, without managing the change properly, there is a real chance you’ll render your pack invisible.”
In conclusion: you can use bio-mechanical triggers and strong de-sign logic to plan an attack on the consumer’s brain. But there is an internal logic to the supermarket to consider as well. If you want to inveigle consumers into snapping up your products, you’ll need to be master of every factor.
If you want to understand visibility, you need to use techniques, such as eye-tracking, which get closer to what’s really
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Unusual materials are playing an increasing role. Design agency Sedley Place created a new look for Johnnie Walker whisky. Sedley Place director Ron Cregan says: “Diageo’s Johnnie Walker Willow Pattern Limited Editions, created for the Johnnie Walker houses in Shanghai and Beijing, are made of porcelain in a direct homage to the Willow Pattern porcelain so belov-ed by previous generations. The bottles have a weight in the hand which is also cool and smooth to the touch because of the porcelain fin-ish. Other limited editions, such as Johnnie Walker’s Epic Dates range, feature inset pewter labels and engraved bottles.
“When packaging uses the finest materials in this way, it assumes a visual language that conveys brand aspects such as quality, authenticity, heritage and sheer pleasure.”
Coley Porter Bell’s revamp of Perrier-Jouët took a similarly re-strained, but outré, route. “The subtle artisan craftsmanship evi-dent on the print finishes, neck foils and monogram seals were refined to reflect the brand’s distinctive col-our palette and enhance the luxury codes in a subtler, more harmonious way,” says Coley Porter Bell chief ex-ecutive Vicky Bullen.
Ostentation is out. Restrained, refined, unique and subtle are in. Naturally, the lower-tiered prod-ucts will follow suit, meaning the luxury brands will soon need a new iteration. But for now, that’s the dominant ethos.
Luxury Goods
If you want to steal ideas for outstanding packag-ing, then the luxury sec-
tor is the place to start. After all, if brands can’t convince buyers to pay often outrageous premiums, then they die.
Luxury brands have the biggest budgets, the most sophisticated consumers and the most ambitious designers. If an idea works here, it is just a matter of time before it filters down to the mid-market.
So what are the latest trends in luxury goods? Who better to ask than Alison Church, event director for easyFairs’ Luxury Packaging Exhibition, the UK’s only luxury packaging event.
“The packaging industry is con-stantly evolving. When I first started working on the show, sustainability was topping the agenda,” she says. “It’s still important, but a key driver behind innovation in the last year has been pack differentiation.
“Shelf stand-out has always been paramount, but increasingly brands are looking at how to engage with their customers beyond the shelf, which has led to an increase in companies creating an experience around their product through their packaging, and linking closely with their social media and marketing
strategies. As a result, packaging innovation to some extent is being driven by consumers who directly interact with brands to influence their decisions. In general, brands today are listening and initiatives such as personalised packaging are booming.”
One-offs and collaborations are a reliable way to generate this sense of uniqueness. Hayley Ard, head of consumer lifestyle at trend watch-ing consultancy Stylus, points to Dom Pérignon champagne’s Sep-tember 2013 collaboration with American artist Jeff Koons as a prime example.
“Koons designed a range of viv-idly coloured, limited-edition gift sets for the French house’s vintage champagnes, influenced by his playful, bubble-shaped sculptures,” she says. “The packaging, which aligns the champagne bottles with inflatable toys, appeals strongly to the youth market. A bottle of Rosé Vintage 2003 is concealed in an eye-catching adaptation of Koons’ Balloon Venus sculpture – a sea of reflective curves in bright fuchsia.”
BARE TYPOGRAPHY
Another trend is stripped back ty-pography. Ms Ard says: “As consum-ers overwhelmed by product choices tune out loud signals, luxury brands are promoting packaging with pared-down typography, sparse layouts and short strings of numbers. Sophisti-cated monograms replace logos. This strategy appeals to consumers who value humble brand transparency and who choose products based on essential information.”
Luxury goods showcase the latest techniques in packaging. So what is the luxury industry telling us right now? Charles Orton-Jones reports
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FUTURE OF PACKAGING19/11/14EDITION #0000
If you thought robots were the fu-ture, you would be wrong; they are the present. As evidenced by this consumer goods facility outside Warsaw, robotic automation is a feature of the packaging here-and-now. More surprisingly, robots not only represent current operating technology, they are also green.
When you look at robotics from an energy perspective compared with tra-ditional workforce personnel, in a sim-ple head-to-head scenario, the carbon footprint numbers add up in favour of automation, concludes Klaus Petersen,
Commercial Feature
Robots, reality and revolutionThe largest plant in Poland owned by a global-brand manufacturer of household cleaning products has averaged more than one addition to the production team every week for the last two years. What makes this trend noteworthy is the fact that all 124 new arrivals are robots
director of marketing in Europe, the Mid-dle East and Africa (EMEA) for Mitsubishi Electric Factory Automation
“Just by comparing the average foot-print of a complete working day,including human commute time, the robot emits half the CO2. And we have not even con-sidered that a Mitsubishi robot could do more than 100 pick-and-place move-ments a minute, making it several times more productive than a human being. At the end of the day, the CO2 footprint of the produced goods would be many times lower using the robot for repetitive tasks.
Of course, there are both job security fears and broader sustainability consid-erations to take into account with auto-mation, he acknowledges.
“People are often scared that robotics are a cause of job losses in the industry. But when you look at the capabilities of a robot compared with a human worker, the core strengths are completely differ-ent,” he says.
“For humans, repetitive work typically leads to employee dissatisfaction and often a shortfall in production quality. But for a robot this is the perfect envi-ronment. Therefore, you’d rather have a robot doing the repetitive work, and your workforce contributing to optimising processes and harnessing their ability to adapt to new situations.
Automation is high on the investment agenda for the food and beverage sector,
which accounts for 70 per cent of all packaging consumed within the UK
“If we can combine all these aspects, we actually see the use of robots creates a win-win situation by enabling the work-force to add value with their true skills – creating a better, happier and more productive working environment – with performance against sustainability tar-gets also enhanced through reductions in the carbon footprint of the manufac-turing company.”
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Automation is high on the investment agenda for the food and beverage sec-tor, which accounts for 70 per cent of all packaging consumed within the UK and promises the largest growth potential for the industry.
Consumer desire to spend less, reduce waste and have fresh food for longer has led to market opportunities in this sector, says Mitsubishi Electric Factory Automation’s original equipment manufacturer (OEM) UK solutions man-ager Jon Sumner.
“The key trend relates to reducing food waste in the home,” he says. “A re-port by WRAP [Waste & Resources Action Programme] suggested that the cost of discarded food to each UK household is around £270 a year, and concerns have driven several changes within the packaging industry, such as re-sealable packs, greater variety in portion and pack sizes, plus modifi ed atmosphere packaging (MAP). All are designed to prolong the useable life of fresh food.”
Food and beverage, in general, is facing a slew of commercial challenges, such as slow throughput, lack of profi ta-bility, product failures, wastage, excess stock, poor information fl ow, plus issues with shipping deadlines, traceability and regulatory compliance.
In response, the key benefi ts and ca-pabilities of integrated, intelligent auto-mation solutions include:
� Process improvement and visualisation;
� Quality management; � Integration into business appli-cations;
� Reporting and analysis, track and trace;
� Regulatory compliance; � Energy saving and optimisa-tion; plus
� Manufacturing intelligence.
CARBON FOOTPRINT: ROBOT V HUMAN
Klaus PetersenDirector of marketing (EMEA) Mitsubishi Electric Factory Automation
The upshot is that traditional mechan-ical packaging machine solutions are being replaced with the latest servo and robotic solutions, which by their very nature increase production rates, while simulta-neously reducing waste and energy usage.
WINDS OF CHANGE
Addressing the major manufacturing metrics of energy saving, productivity (cost allocation) and quality, all within an overarching sustainability frame-work, is the automation game chang-er for packaging, according to Jamy Michel, director vertical industries, food and beverage consumer packaged goods (F&B CPG), EMEA, at Mitsubishi Electric Factory Automation.
“Intelligent automation can improve the effi ciency of your production lines, respond faster to new market demands and maximise the usage of resources. All benefi ts are achievable and deliverable with full visibility, to enrich society with performing technology,” he says.
If you think such a scenario sounds more dream than reality, again you are
wrong. Mitsubishi Electric robots are al-ready handling 4.1 billion biscuits every year, plus its equipment is producing and packaging 15,000 tons of salty snacks, with 2.7 billion litres of dairy products delivered in 2013.
Furthermore, the success stories are not simply about speed and volume, effi ciency and consumption. An estab-lished European name in cakes and pastries saw its daily cookie production increase from 12,000kg to 22,000kg, accompanied by a 20 per cent uplift in quality. In the UK, a major dairy com-pany not only reduced energy usage by up to 173kW per hour using Mit-subishi Electric variable speed drives, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and human-machine interfaces (HMIs), so saving on running costs, but the op-eration was also able to down-rate the pump motors considerably, saving on material costs, too.
With multiple performance benefi ts and resource savings, plus long-term customer support enhanced by back-wards compatibility of new system releases, Mitsubishi Electric is encour-aging packaging companies to think about lifecycle management in terms of “solutions”, not just products.
“Cultural change is as irresistible as the technology driving it,” concludes Mr Michel. “Forced to manage the big shift to a more sustainable business model, the packaging industry sits on the cusp of a revolution – and the revolution will be automated.”
Average power consumption = 500WIn Germany 1kWh = approximately 600g of CO2 emissions (Statista GmbH) – but, let’s be a bit more pessimistic and assume it produces a whole 1kg.Therefore, with 240 8-hour working days a year, robot footprint = 0.5kW x 8h x 240 days x 1000g/kWh = 960kg of CO2
MITSUBISHI ROBOT
Person is living 20km from the factory and driving there and back in a car that produces 188g/km.Therefore, with 240 8-hour working days a year,human footprint = 188g/km x 20km x 2 x 240 days = 1805kg of CO2
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Healthcare
40%of the 40 billion injections each year are with reused syringes without sterilisation
Source: World Health Organization
he says. But with so many different types of packaging and the excess amount of information on such a small surface, it is no wonder pa-tients are left completely bewildered.
ICONS POINT TO FUTURE
Simon Wight, managing direc-tor of Greenwich Design, says ico-nography – disseminating content using images – can alleviate the confusion. “In the EU, many health companies are trying to ensure that their packaging works across mul-tiple languages,” he explains. “The main barrier is language, whereas numbers and visuals are universal.” Greenwich Design recently rede-signed the entire range of packaging for Milton Healthcare.
However, Mr Wight cautions against the overuse of iconogra-phy. “These are only worth having if they’re universally understood,” he says, stressing the need for
more market research on usage.Advice to refer to a website is
another factor that contributes to non-adherence. “Being redirected to a website requires taking an extra step, which is unnecessary,” he says. “Customers will choose to believe what’s on the pack first. The short-cut here is that it gives the patient the information on dosage quickly. The battle of psychology is done in milliseconds.”
Solving the issue of non-adher-ence is not easy. The amount of space allocated for on-pack com-munications can be split into three categories: 50 to 60 per cent for the necessary legalese, 25 to 30 per cent for a company’s own mes-saging, leaving only 10 per cent to the designer.
EU REGULATION
In addition, any medicines listed as certain types of “food” will have to comply with new EU laws after December 13 this year. This new regulation will see, for example, the “best before” date printed on one area of the label in large legi-ble print. The new labels must also highlight allergens, such as milk and nuts, listed in an appendix to the regulation.
Smart packaging can help patients take correct and regular doses of medicines, avoiding complications, even death, as well as costly waste, writes Celestine Cheong
The changing colour of a syringe can warn patients when the needle is unsafe
When sick we may turn to medicines to get better. However, swallowing pills
and downing bitter liquids to over-come illness can be cumbersome, even at the best of times, let alone remembering guidelines on when to take the next dose. But skipping doses, doubling up or not complet-ing prescriptions is commonplace. This non-adherence to guide-lines can lead to undesirable out-comes, such as recurring infections or side effects.
In the UK, three people die every day from asthma. The Royal College of Physicians states that poor ad-herence to recommended asthmas medication or action plans is part of the cause. This non-adherence to prescribed medicine sees the NHS waste £500 million a year. The fig-ure is compounded by 50 per cent of patients who do not take their medi-cation correctly. In the EU, 200,000 deaths occur each year because of missed doses of medication.
“£500 million is conservative,” says James Murray, sales and mar-keting director at MTS Medication Technologies, on the cost of non-ad-herence in the UK. “It does not in-clude the measurement of wasted drugs, people who don’t take them, additional costs such as people stay-ing in hospitals and medication that is out of date.”
In the United States, this cost is estimated at a staggering $100 bil-lion to $300 billion a year, which stands at three times NHS England’s entire budget. This includes costs from avoidable hospitalisations, nursing home admissions and pre-mature deaths.
According to MTS Medication Technologies, one in twenty patients in the UK take more than ten types of medicines each day. “The more types of medicine a patient needs to take, overall the less compliant they can become with respect to their dos-age timings,” says Mr Murray, on the overwhelming choice of medi-cines available, each with a different dosage cycle.
“Patients are at their most vul-nerable when they are about to take their medicine for the first time,”
Take Medicine
12:00pm
£500mwasted in the NHS each year through non-adherence to prescribed medicines
200kdeaths in the EU a year are because of missed medication
Source: Aston University
Source: World Health Organization
1 in 20 patients in the UK take more than 10 types of medicines a day
Source: MTS Medication Technologies
World Design Impact Prize, which is awarded every two years by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.
Packaging alone is not the solu-tion. It may be that both graphics and structure play a role. “Around 200,000 patients in the UK re-quire further support to take their medication correctly – above and beyond existing adherence sys-tems,” says Mr Murray of MTS Medication Technologies.
Consideration of the use of bi-ometrics, such as with the new Apple Watch, can focus on basic pa-rameters, including exercise, diet, stress and medication scheduling. Then there are “clever card” tech-nologies which prompt and record medication adherence. As soon as a blister is opened a message is sent to a cloud-based system letting carers and pharmacists know the medica-tion has been accessed.
It is not just medicine that is subject to non-adherence issues. The World Health Organization es-timates up to 40 per cent of the 40 billion injections administered each year are delivered with syringes re-used without sterilisation, allowing diseases such as Hepatitis B and C as well as HIV to be transmitted and resulting in 1.3 million in deaths.
This global healthcare problem has led to a redesign in syringe pack-aging by the University of Hudders-field where the changing colour of a syringe can warn patients when the needle is unsafe. Like an opened carton of milk, the syringe’s expo-sure to air, specifically carbon diox-ide, activates an ink after a minute, turning the label to red. This alerts patients to the fact that the sy-ringe has been used once and is no longer sterile.
The design, developed by Dr David Swann, received the 2014
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Campbell, Dell’s director of pro-curement for packaging. “Wheat straw is the leftover canes after the wheat grains are harvested and is treated mostly as waste. In some countries farmers burn it, contrib-uting to air pollution.”
Mr Campbell maintains that the boxes look and perform like regular cardboard, and at end of life can be channelled into existing recycling streams. This is important when it comes to customer disposal of pack-aging as the infrastructure must be in place to support effective recovery.
Consumer-facing messaging is key here, notes WRAP’s director of sustainable food systems Richard Swannell. “For packaging, one of the most successful interventions has been the on-pack recycling label. This gives people at home clear in-formation about how to recycle the packaging in their cupboards and helps keep material flowing within the economy,” he says.
Dr Swannell has yet to be convinced of the benefits of com-postable packaging, feeling it offers less “closed-loop” potential than recycling in regard to the use of re-sources. Mark Shayler, an eco-pack-aging expert, is inclined to agree. “The consumer likes the idea of compostable packaging, but the re-
ality is it doesn’t compost effective-ly yet. You need tightly controlled commercial composting facilities to make it work,” he says.
Mr Shayler says the rise of flexi-ble packaging, such as plastic bags, sweet wrappers and laminated pouches, also presents a recovery challenge. Data sourced from pack-aging compliance scheme operator Valpak indicates flexible packaging makes up 32 per cent of consumer plastic packaging in the UK, with virtually all of it – 556,000 tonnes – ending up in landfill.
“Laminated packaging, such as pouches, are difficult to deconstruct to the core constituents of alumi-num and polyethylene; all you can do is downcycle them into a very inferior quality fibrous product that mixes those two things together,” he says.
REPROCESSING TECHNOLOGY
Moves are now underway to ad-dress this. Nestlé and Unilever are among a group of companies back-ing a project to make plastic-based flexible packaging more circular through the use of new barrier pol-ymers, novel packaging designs and smarter reprocessing technology. The project is being partly govern-ment funded by Innovate UK and will run for two years. Industry-wide guidelines will be drawn up as part of the output.
“We will be demonstrating im-proved recyclability for flexible packaging used for both Nestlé and Unilever products,” says Liz Mor-rish, principal consultant at project lead Axion Recycling. Innovate UK’s lead specialist for sustainability Dr Mike Pitts reckons it could become a circular-economy blueprint. “We’re very excited about it as it contains all the nodes of the new network needed to close the loop on this form of packaging,” he says.
End of Life
The premise of a circular
economy is to design out waste from industrial systems by keeping raw materials and products in use for as long as possible
While packaging waste has always represented a val-uable material resource in
its own right, more could be done. According to the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), in 2012 the UK recycled 61.4 per cent of its packaging, falling short of the EU-27 average of 64.6 per cent. It currently sits in eighteenth position in terms of member-state performance.
A new business agenda – the cir-cular economy – is now emerging which could accelerate action on this front. The premise of a circular economy is to design out waste from industrial systems by keeping raw materials and products in use for as long as possible. It is forcing com-panies to rethink their approach so they retain more of the value of the material and energy inputs that go into products.
For packaging, this might mean developing products that can be upcycled rather than downcycled. Unlike recycling, which generally downgrades materials, upcycling can retain or increase the original value of the packaging for its next use. Carlsberg Group has targeted upcycling as one of the core strands of work under its Carlsberg Circular Community, a supplier-led initiative that aims to optimise the beer mak-er’s packaging for smarter reuse.
“We want to move away from our products having a ‘lifetime warran-ty’ and towards them having an ‘af-terlife warranty’,” explains Simon Hoffmeyer Boas, senior corporate social responsibility manager at Carlsberg Group. He points to an example of upcycling being “when a refillable bottle is washed and re-filled, thus becoming a beer bottle once again, or when a can is sent back into the marketplace as a new product thereby retaining the value of the aluminium”.
In some markets, Carlsberg al-
ready offers refillable glass bot-tles which in some cases are used more than 30 times. “Return rates do differ by markets, according to how efficient the reverse logistics setup is, how well the consumer is educated in terms of returning the used packaging and to what extent the incentive structure is defined,” Mr Hoffmeyer Boas says.
USER EXPERIENCE – PROBABLY
While some of Carlsberg’s inno-vation work on this front probably goes unnoticed by the consumer, such as optimisation of inks and lacquers on packaging, on-pack ed-ucational messaging can give good visibility. However, any sustaina-ble alternatives must deliver added value to the customer – factors such as aesthetics, convenience and user experience all come into play.
The company is mindful of this challenge going forward. “We are looking into rethinking our packag-ing materials and introducing inno-vations that challenge the bounda-ries of today’s beer packaging. These would have a different look and feel that would be very apparent to con-sumers,” says Mr Hoffmeyer Boas.
Meanwhile, computer giant Dell has a goal of creating 100 per cent waste-free packaging by 2020. It has taken a different approach, one that draws on the principles of biomim-icry which uses nature as a template for material design. The company is making packaging from composta-ble and recyclable materials, such as bamboo, mushrooms and wheat straw. In the case of wheat straw, the production process uses 40 per cent less energy and 90 per cent less wa-ter than traditional methods.
“We incorporate wheat straw in the production of corrugated box-es for laptop products, mixing the straw with recycled paper fibres to create the cardboard,” says Oliver
20%cost reduction per hectolitre of beer sold to consumers would be possible across all markets by shifting from disposable to reusable glass bottles
Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation
32%of UK consumer plastic packaging is flexible bags, wrappers and laminates, virtually all of which ends up in landfill
Source: Valpak
WHAT GOES AROUNDCOMES AROUND…
New forms of packaging can extend its life or upgrade the material for another use, as Maxine Perella discovers
Paris Christmas trees made from recycled bottles
Image: Getty
61.4% of all UK packaging used by households and industry was recycled in 2012
