FLEXIBLE OR RIGID PLASTIC CONTAINERS FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM INDUSTRIES, A MATTER OF BRANDING

How digital technologies for flexible packaging pave the way for branding in small and medium size companies

Dear packoholics

The struggle that many companies face due to pandemics, and the effect it has on employment and financial growth, especially in family and small businesses, is undeniable.

Although in the strategy manual the action of developing new products to grow always appears, there is also the fundamental part of how to maintain the branding of the products so that the consumer continues to identify them.

This is where this dilemma arises about the type of packaging material to use given the attractions that each one has.

For large companies, these decisions often involve investments that they can afford, given, to a certain degree, the budget they have, which allows them to access large volumes and thus prorate the investment and manage the cash flow, giving access to the more appropriate technologies, up to a point.

For medium and small companies, and in some large ones, accessing these technologies to develop products and establish a branding of their products is unattainable, which means that they either invest in very high volumes of inventory, or have to use a generic packaging that does not allow them to differentiate their product from the rest, subject to its production program and without the possibility of optimizing either weight or cost.

For these companies, the offer of digital printing in flexible packaging opens the door to facilitate the development and launch of new products with high flexibility in volumes, designs and production runs.

Here is a brief technical and supply chain and sustainability analysis:

SHELF LIFE

Flexible packaging

Since the flexible container is a combination of several layers that have different characteristics, to provide printability, mechanical properties, barrier properties to oxygen, water vapor, visible or ultraviolet light, it is very easy to design its composition to generate the shelf life required according to the product

These combinations are obtained either through the lamination process or the coextrusion process.

Rigid packaging

The rigid plastic container, due to its transformation process, generates many difficulties to obtain the shelf life:

• The simplest expression of a rigid container is a monolayer container, which implies the use of PET, LDPE or HDPE in its majority, and per se each of these materials has a barrier limited to the aforementioned elements, when compared to what can be obtained by combining a flexible container in a simpler process
• If it is required to increase these barriers:

1. An additive or additives are added to achieve the desired effects in terms of oxygen, CO2, Visible Light or UV Light. Additives to provide an oxygen barrier, which meet recycling standards, tend to decay over time, limiting their effectiveness, and are highly hygroscopic
2. Technologies that use multilayers are used, either in the preform or in the blowing of the bottle, which involve the use of a special extrusion die, to combine several materials to obtain the required barrier
3. Specialized plastic resins are used, most of them at a high cost.
4. It is important to note that none of the resins used, given the transformation process, can generate a very high value in terms of water vapor barrier.

Type of products and safety

Flexible Containers

• Solid foods: Chocolates, Sweets, Chicken Cubes, etc.
• Powdered foods: powdered drinks, chicken broths, seeds, snacks, powdered milk, powdered gelatin, soups, etc. It should be noted that the powder presentation allows a longer shelf life in terms of chemical reactions, given the absence of water as a medium for them.
• Pasta foods: Moles, Flour pasta, Ketchup, Mayonnaise, Avocado paste under the High Pressure Pasteurization process, this being the great facilitator of product exports to the USA
• Home and personal care liquids
• Lubricants
• Liquid beverages: Water, beverages with preservatives, dairy, or beverages with aseptic or ESL filling.
• Processes or products not suitable for flexible packaging:

1. Pasteurization
2. Hot fill
3. Carbonated drinks

Rigid plastic containers

• Solid foods: Only in wide-mouth formats
• Powdered foods: coffees, powdered drinks, chicken broths, seeds, snacks, powdered milk, powdered gelatin, etc.). Given the moisture barrier limitations, they have a short shelf life and require a wide mouth format.
•  Pasta foods: Only those with a medium viscosity that allows them to flow or in wide-mouth jars.
• Home and personal care liquids
• Lubricants
• Liquid beverages: Water, beverages with preservatives, dairy or ESL or aseptic fill beverages, hot fill pasteurized beverages, carbonated beverages.
• Processes or products not suitable for rigid packaging or with limitations:

1. HPP: It only inactivates the microbiological part, but the shelf life is not extended, because it depends on the permeability properties of the material. It requires certain mechanical and design properties to respond to the high pressure process.

DESIGN AND SUPPLY CHAIN

Flexible packaging (traditional printing processes)

Design

• Graphic design: can be obtained within the required quality ranges, with an acceptable definition
• Functional design: The final form and functionality to maintain the hermeticity or its reuse, is obtained either in-situ (using the roll) or preformed.

Supply Chain

It requires specialized equipment to generate the plates or cylinders that represent a significant investment for the converter and that are transferred to the customer, either within the cost structure (price), as in the cost of the cylinders or plates, which will be directly proportional to the number of inks / colors they handle, which in some cases can reach 1,700 USD or more per cylinder

Any change in the design, for reasons of graphic changes, ingredient list, change in regulations, changes in net content, etc., implies remaking the plates and cylinders at an additional cost, as well as wear due to abrasion due to inks. , generates that the cylinders have to be remade.

Volumes

Given the investment and the required size of the equipment to manufacture the flexible containers, the production minimums are very high, 500 Kg or 1 Ton, which implies the manufacture of millions of containers to be formed.

Cost and investment

The production minimums force an excessive purchase that impacts:

• High inventories of packaging material with a significant working capital investment, as well as excessive storage areas
• Risk of exceeding the shelf life of the packaging material, which implies the loss of properties and that the manufacturer does not receive the material if it presents a problem in its functionality

Branding

In the case of flexible packaging, branding is practically given by the graphic design and is immovable at least during the minimum production

Rigid plastic containers

Design

The design of a rigid plastic container must take into account not only aesthetics, but also mechanical and process properties to achieve the desired effect. To achieve this requires:

• Blow molds that generate the shape (PET, LDPE, HDPE)
• Injection molds that produce the preform (PET) to later be transformed in the blowing process. The preform must have such a design in the thickness of its walls that it shapes the container at the same time that it gives it its mechanical properties.
• In any of the conversion cases, a finish or thread that fits to receive the closure with which the container is closed and / or a guarantee seal foil is required.

Supply chain

Along with the items mentioned above, it is required

• Injection equipment for the manufacturing of the preform (PET)
• Equipment for blowing the container with personalization parts
• Peripherals such as compressors, coolers, desiccators to remove moisture from the resin (PET), palletizers, labellers in some cases

Volumes

• For an exclusive design for the client, it is required at least to make an investment in the blow molds and possibly in the injection molds, which implies a significant investment which implies from 3500 USD per cavity and 500,000 USD correspondingly (2 steps) or from 40,000 USD for a one-step machine
• For the conversion of the blowing equipment, the investment can range from a range of 250,000 USD to just over 1 MM USD.
• In blowing LDPE / HDPE it goes around 15,000 USD per cavity
• This implies that production volumes must be very high to justify the existing investment.

Cost

The cost of the material as will be understood is made up of

• Resin cost
• Cost of molds
• Blowing equipment cost
• Peripherals cost
• Freight and storage cost, practically because it is hollow containers. More or less a relationship is calculated that for each blown rigid container, 10 flexible containers are transported and / or stored

Branding

Since branding is given by the shape of the container, in the case of medium or small companies the investment in all the equipment, molds and tooling makes it impossible, for the moment, to access unique ways that allow them to differentiate their products in the shelf, more than by the graphic, so it is totally subject to the shapes, weights of containers and type of lids that are generically offered in the market

Flexible Packaging (digital printing processes)

Design

• Graphic design: can be obtained within the required quality ranges, a high definition of the image, precision in the colors to be obtained and the registration between colors
• Functional design: The final form and functionality to maintain the hermeticity or its reuse, is obtained either in-situ (using the roll) or preformed. The latter is the most used process to give flexibility to the client.

Supply chain

• There is no investment in cylinders or plates, the whole process is carried out in a printer that in a digital process transfers the image to the film.
• The lamination processes are similar, but on a smaller scale than in traditional processes
• The production of the bag is done by the converter

Volumes

All processes allow small volumes, a minimum of 1000 pieces that allows the client to work flexibly in testing concepts

Cost and investment

• The unit cost is higher than the cost of the traditional process, however, given the low inventories required, the financial cost of working capital, storage and freight are significantly reduced.
• The effect of having low inventories significantly reduces the risk of obsolescence of the container for the shelf life

Branding

One of the great advantages in the digital printing process is the ability to change designs on the fly, alternating, sequential, etc.

Along with this, elements can be incorporated to generate personalization experiences (think of the Coca Cola name campaign), augmented reality, virtual reality, etc.

• And above all the precision in the reproduction of images, colors and the registration between them.

Sustainability

Although, in general terms, there has been consensus on the possibilities of recycling, of the materials and processes presented here, the scenario must be illuminated from other angles to understand sustainability

Recyclability

Flexible packaging

By their nature they are not directly recyclable, although there are significant advances in the use of monolayer barrier materials that facilitate their recycling.

Rigid containers

PET

• Is the most recyclable material of all those on the market, due to its wide use, however, for a bottle to become resin for another bottle, a process is required that separates the materials that form it that are not compatible , clean and eliminate that PET that presents contamination, and must be formed into pellets again.
• An important condition in the recycling chain is that the containers must be transparent or slightly blue, as they represent most of the bottle production, any other color is used for fibers and is not accepted for use in bottles.
• Today there is the option of using chemical recycling resin, which in simple words means that the resin is re-polymerized, which restores its optical and mechanical properties.

HDPE / LDPE

• Although it goes through a process similar to PET, the optical properties are affected and an unpleasant odor is generated.
• In this case, to use it again in a bottle, it is necessary to eliminate the odor, or where appropriate, use the multilayer resin, to avoid contact with the product.

Carbon footprint

Here the situation is reversed, the weight of flexible packaging is well below that of rigid plastic packaging, which has an impact on non-renewable resources and on the energy consumed in their manufacture, as well as in transport and the consumption of associated fuels, due to the ratio of 10 to 1 flexible container vs rigid container, which implies a lower number of freights and a lower requirement to move the weight.

In the case of digital printing, the impact is even greater, since only the necessary quantity is transported.

Circular economy

The future of the circular economy in terms of packaging is not mono-material or mono-format, each one has its limitations and only together can they provide a more adequate response to this demand, and it is here, also where printing digital has its great advantages due to its flexibility in volumes, in its manufacture and in its packaging process

New distribution channels

Finally, given the growth of sales channels such as e-commerce, the shopping experience is transferred to the virtual part, where the end consumer can choose thousands of brands, with a specific category, and the personalization and creation of Unique unboxing and use experiences, going beyond the packaging, will be key to achieving attention on a page where there is no touch & feel, only photographs.

What should happen in the future?

The step that the flexible packaging industry took towards digital technologies for production should be used as a reference by the rigid plastic packaging industry, if it wants to enter those markets with low volume, but which represent 70%, in the case of Mexico, in terms of GDP and jobs generated.

Should you have further questions or request

email: jorge.maquita@packinnovation.com.mx

URL: www.packinnovation.com.mx