1. You growl if anyone says “Dabba banaate ho” (you make boxes)
2. You follow your experience and knowledge to open a pack, rather then mere tearing or twisting it.
3. You can spend countless hours in retail stores or hyper marts simply by ‘just’ looking at the packaging of different products
4. You click immediately any beautiful, creative or innovative packaging that you come across.
5. You cringe when someone says “cartoon” to your favourite CARTON box. Of-course you end up correcting them.
6. Your family asks you every time they face difficulty in opening a pack. After all you are a packaging expert – RIGHT?
7. You are hurt when a refill box is used for other purpose rather than filling it with the same product next time.
8. Only you can imagine your pain when a reclosable pack has been badly torn from anywhere except from the area where it has to be actually opened.
9. You smartly debates on fundamental of aseptic packaging and why milk doesn’t get spoiled even when kept for 6 months in a Tetrapak.
10. When a pack tear perforation is not correctly opened and you jump from that sight.
11. You are unhappy to see that a hanger or handing solution provided with a pack is not used for the right purpose.
12. You check bottom of every bottle to check the process and material identification marks
13. Well, no one knows or understands what you actually do at work.
14. Yes, you instantly click this article after reading the topic / title
15. You enjoyed reading all the points and smiled at almost each once. You know you are also the one who does these things. We are proud to be a PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIST.

Packaging of these capsules is always a challenge mainly due to the fact that these become brittle due to moisture loss. So controlled transportation is critical and expensive also. Normally companies in India pack them in PE bags, then in thermocole (Polystyrene) boxes and then in 5 ply corrugated boxes. These are then transported but for exports, these go into refrigerated containers. So all this makes it too expensive. Are you aware of any internationally accepted cost effective & functional packaging system for these? This is the way I know things are done by some in India. We have been approached by one company to recommend some more options. We do have some ideas but would like to discuss it with our reders too.

PackagingConnections.com The one-stop shop for all things packaging has released its report on packaging innovations in the dairy sector. The report is an exhaustive study and analysis of major dairy cooperatives in India. The report will help packaging professionals and suppliers from dairy industries to understand the basics of the industry, packaging requirements, distribution channels (organized and unorganized), and challenges faced by dairy industry along with the parameters that determine effective dairy operations - specially for packaging operations and packaging trends. This report also serves as consolidated data of cooperatives.

USP of this report is the actual data collected from major cooperative dairies of India. This determines processing and packaging capacities vs. actual packed products thereby highlighting the huge potential for this sector in India.

The study covers packaging trends for milk, cottage cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream, Ghee, lassi, Paneer, flavored milk amongst other dairy products.

The report includes latest innovations in this sector from across the globe, new developments in packaging formats, FFS lines, shelf ready packs, display formats, institutional packs, green/ecofriendly packs and new conceptual packs.

The report is beneficial for packaging professionals from Dairy industries to understand the packaging requirements and innovations; material suppliers to get an update packaging potential among top dairies and cooperatives of India and machine suppliers to tap the business potential

The research was conducted pan India. All Main cooperatives in India were visited. A set format questionnaire was prepared and Packaging and Purchase department heads were contacted.  Data  brands, volumes, sku, packed vs loose, packaging sourcing, current packaging trends was collected.

This has been a rigorous research work, which has taken a complete year to collect, collate and present in the form of Dairy Industry report.

Available at: http://www.packagingconnections.com/packaging-innovations-dairy-sector-india-2012.htm

Processing / Packaging Capacity

Visit:  http://www.packagingconnections.com/packaging-innovations-dairy-sector-… for the report on packaging innovations in the dairy sector.

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About Packaging Connections

www.PackagingConnections.com is Your Destination for Anything in Packaging.

www.PackagingConnections.com is an end to end solution provider for packaging. The skilled and experienced team offers consultation, innovation, customization and execution in the field of packaging. The company specialize in technical packaging solutions with powerful project management skills. Their exhaustive network of designers, vendors and stakeholders allows for best in class solutions for every budget or need.

The portal is a common packaging platform connecting packaging professionals from all across the globe and the ultimate packaging resource with latest innovations, research and reports. The portal also hosts buyer and seller offers, p-interviews, and offers networking opportunities with key decision maker, buyers, sellers, users & professionals.

It helps to find out newer business opportunities in India & worldwide and promotes direct interaction among members & visitors.

The company has created cutting edge packaging solutions for healthcare/pharmaceutical industries, foods & beverages and customized training with the help of their years of practical industry experience.

Mrs Chhavi Aggarwal
Associate – Research and Technology

Recently while on a business trip across India last week with my German colleague I was tarveling by Jet Airways. I noticed that Hindustan Unilever had come out with a very nice looking and nice graphics pack with single tea bag inside saying Exclusive Selection of finest teas. It also had the nicely printed booklet with lots of picture telling how to make nice tea. This was a great idea to promote Indian tea. Now the problem was that as a packaging professional, I could see that top seal was tilted, bottom graphics had the graphics suggesting cutting line. The cut mark was though on top and it was not easy to open the packet. So all the good work done on graphics, selection of right packaging material to contain the aroma of tea was marred by poor easy opening and confusing arrow mark graphics at the bottom. So poor experience of opening the pack and trying to open on the wrong side, will remain in the memory of consumers for long and it would leave a bad taste for the nice teas in the bag. I think we as packaging professionals must notice such things and let marketing know about it.

As a packaging technologist we are aware of this kind of packaging. But most of us are aware of only few options that can make a pack tamper evident. But first we need to see, why this tamper evident feature is of utmost importance for pharmaceutical packaging?

As per AMG – German Pharmaceutical Products Act, pharmaceuticals for human use must have security features, as well as the possibility to detect potential tampering, on their outer packaging.

The AMG also defines “Falsified Medicine” as product containing false information concerning it’s-

1. Identity, packaging, name or composition relating to one or several ingredients, including additives and the content of these ingredients,

2. Origin, including the manufacturer, country of manufacture, country of origin and owner of commercialization approval or

3. The distribution channel described in records and documents.

This definition extends the traditional term of a falsification as a brand and/or patent infringement and significantly expands the protection rights to include the prerequisites of GMP/GDP conformance.

To identify a falsified medicine, EU has defined a standard to describe tamper verification features for outer packaging as-

1. “Security features which make it possible for wholesalers and persons who are empowered or authorized to dispense medicines to the public to verify the authenticity of the medicine and to identify single packs

2. As well as a device which makes it possible to check if the outer packaging has been tampered with.”

There are various options for providing tamper evident seals that includes-

• Glue Dots
• Folding Construction
• Self Adhesive Seals
• Penetration Indicators
• Tearing Fibres
• Void effect
• Other sealing techniques such as film wraps, blisters and sleeves today are playing only a minor part in secondary packaging of pharmaceuticals.

You can find the detailed description on these options through this interesting article –

http://www.packagingconnections.com/tamper-proof-pharmaceutical-packaging.htm

" Each problem has hidden within it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity."  Joseph Sugarman

So this is the situation in India, PET film prices going up heavily and people are not ready to run alternate materials like OPP or PE film combinations. I think its an opportunity to work on alternate combinations. There is no invention required. It is just the need to come together and make the small group of machine supplier, alternate film supplier , user, converter and resin supplier. If these 5 people work together, I am sure a workable solution can be quickly found using the current available technologies without any further investments. There might be some small investments required at end users but I think those are simple to manage looking at the opportunity available!

Do you have any suggestions or recommendations to move forward? Any idea what could be the size of this new market?

There is a notification by Government of India to ban many plastic laminates which looks like that a decision without really thinking about solutions. unfortunately there is hardly any reaction seen by the media in India or by packaging suppliers. Only few companies like GSK, Reliance, Dabur India have reacked, may be there are more but not known to us. Here is the summary of proposed notification and we look forward to your comments on this.

This is the notification given by Ministry Of Environment and Forests Dated-17,Sep 2009. Draft contains the rules for plastic (Manufacturer,Usage And Waste Management). This notification mainly covers the draft rules for monolayer bags/pouches, multilayer laminates and plastic containers. The main rule (Rule 5) in the Notification is: -                           A. Carry bags and conatiners made of virgin plastic shall be in natural shade                                                                   

 B. No person shall use bags or containers made of recycled plastics or biodegradable plastic for storing, carrying, dispensing or packaging of food stuffs                                                                                                                                   

C. Carry bags and containers made of recycled or biodegradable plastics and used for purpose of other than storing and packaging foodstuffs shall be manufactured using pigments and colorants as per the Bureau of Indian Standards specifications:IS 9833:1981 entitled "List of pigments and colourants for use in plastics in contact with foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and drinking water".                                                                                                                                       

D. No person shall manufacture, stock, distribute or sell carry bags made of virgin or recycled plastics or bio-degradable plastics, which are less than 12x18 inches (30x45 cms) in size and less than 40 microns in thickness.                               

E. No person shall manufacture carry bags or containers or pouches multilayered packaging from biodegradable plastics unless these meet the Bureau of Indian Standards specifications:IS/ISO 17088:2008 entitled "Specifications for compostable plastics".                                                                                                                                                             

F. No person shall manufacture, stock, distribute or sell non-recyclable laminated plastic or metallic pouches, multilayered packaging's and other non-recyclable plastics. Please find the below link of the complete draft notification from the ministry.

http://www.packagingconnections.com/downloads/MoEF_English.pdf

This concern has also been posted by Mr Amninder Singh : Associate Research & Technology at www.packagingconnections.com at P-Exchnage, you can visit P-Exchnage at  http://www.packagingconnections.com/p-exchange/moef-draft-notification-plastic-manufacturerusage-and-waste-management-rules2009.htm

 We look forward to your comments, ideas to address it and recommend innovative solutions.

Other day at the airport, I met an old friend of mine. he is also from the packaging field and we then started talking about OPP film use in India. While we looked at the numbers on rough basis, what we found is quite interesting:  the global capacity of PET film is approx 1800 thosand tonees while OPP is approx 5500 thosand  tonnes annually. When we look at the same comparison in India, PET film capacity is approx 300 thosand tonees and OPP film capacity is 250 thosand tonnes.

So did you notice that globally OPP is films is used more than 3 times than PET film while in India its even less than PET film.

I do not know what is the reason behind such a big difference. Earlier I used to think, it due to machineability but now its more than 20 years that OPP is popular in India and all such printability, machineability issues have found the solutions. So any idea why such a big difference when we look globally?

Years ago, packaging salespeople were extremely valuable to customers because they were the holders of information. Without salespeople, customers were hard-pressed to uncover facts and gain insight on pricing, product specifications, similar and innovative applications, and industry trends. Packaging sales reps can still be valuable, but not in the same way — and packaging companies need to make their sales teams relevant or risk losing a valuable asset and competitive edge.

Three things are working against them that threaten to make them obsolete:

1. Information Access

With the Internet, all that has changed. With a computer nearby throughout the workday, buyers have all the time they need to do packaging research, and in some cases learn more than their packaging reps know.

2. Communication Preferences

Younger generations of buyers generally prefer digital communication to the phone or face-to-face meetings. But packaging reps tend to excel at verbal communication and see digital (text and email) as a last-ditch option.

3. Time and Relationships

When I started selling packaging in the 1980s, buyers had more time to talk to sales reps. The pace of business was slower — for instance, it was perfectly acceptable to submit a quote a week after a sales call, whereas now the buyer expectation could be the next day or the same day. Buyers no longer have the time to cultivate the relationship side of business — and it was those relationships, in addition to information, that made packaging reps so important in securing and maintaining business.

New Roles for Packaging Salespeople

In light of this, how can packaging salespeople stay relevant and valuable in the eyes of customers? Here are a few ideas.

•  Hire reps with exceedingly strong written communication skills, and train existing reps in how to use digital communication effectively. If email and text are what customers want, the packaging company that communicates best wins. And at the very least, skilled written communication will eliminate or reduce the problems caused by bad written communication.
• Develop the project management skills of sales reps. Customized packaging applications in FMCG, pharma and cosmetics can be rather complex, involving engineering, packaging design, prototyping, etc. If the sales rep can serve as an effective project manager and customer point person for the job, that rep becomes more valuable than ever.
• Train reps to be effective hosts of webinars. In our world of B2B marketing, we see companies using webinar campaigns quite effectively for sharing information on complex product and industry issues — excellent for attracting new customers and building relationships with existing ones. Sales reps are natural webinar emcees with the right training in communication and technology.
• Cold calling has become a near impossible task for packaging reps, no matter how skilled they are. To keep lead pipelines full, packaging companies can develop innovative inbound and outbound lead generation campaigns to help reps concentrate on what they do best, turning qualified prospects into customers.

Author Bio:

Brad Shorr is Director of Content Strategy at Straight North, an SEO agency headquartered in the Chicago area. He has more than 20 years of experience in the packaging industry in sales and marketing.