Swiss packaging expert SIG head of sustainability and digital marketing Bojan Buric Heler tells Packaging Gateway about the value behind connected packaging and how SIG is contributing to the market with its new digital closure product, 'One Cap, One Code'.

In today’s on-demand and digitalised world, consumers are more connected and informed than ever. They know what they want, how they want it, and who they want it from.

As digital consumers and connected spenders adopt new behaviours and communication channels, brands are having to work even harder to reach, understand and engage them.

Businesses need packaging solutions that can easily provide valuable product data in real time to assist in supply chain quality and control.

Swiss packaging expert SIG head of sustainability and digital marketing Bojan Buric Heler tells Packaging Gateway about the value behind connected packaging and how SIG is contributing to the market with its new digital closure product, ‘One Cap, One Code’.

Connected packaging
In this highly competitive market, connected packaging has emerged as an effective way for food and beverage producers to connect with consumers. Solutions like scannable QR codes are being utilised more and more on consumer products – turning physical packs into interactive tools.

All of this is so consumers can access the information they want, while brands can build trust and recognition.

Connected packaging is an incredible opportunity for companies to play a bigger role in consumers’ lives. Through interactive functionalities and enhanced user experiences, brands can offer real value to consumers.

Tracking and interacting
With higher competitive pressure and consumer demands, businesses need to find new ways to reliably manage their entire supply chain, from source to shelf.

These are known to grab masse’s attention at the retail outlet, pop-up event, and your own store’s shelf. The lightweight products can be packed easily inside the display boxes.

Most Visible Packaging Solution

The best feature of the display packaging boxes is that these are highly prominent packaging options. When one enters the supermarket, then display boxes seem to be the highlighted part of it. Their eminence enhances the desire of people to grab the product. Hence, they make the impulse buying for the branded product that will ultimately enhance the sale.

The transparency of the display packaging boxes generates curiosity in the masses. The inner and more exciting portion of the product can be viewed with the use of the transparency technique.

High-Quality Retail Boxes

The trust of masses in the brand potentiates when the boxes are manufactured from high-quality stock. The features of packaging stock are quite important is determine. It should be eco-friendly in nature, having the maximum tensile strength. It can either be cardboard or corrugated stock that is used for manufacturing display boxes. Cardboard is much more economical and suitable for lightweight objects.

Corrugated stock reflects more strength than cardboard stock and is hence found suitable for moderately-weight objects. The major concerns of businesses are to show off and exhibit their products in the market quite effectively.

The packaging industry offers enormous types of boxes for fulfilling the desire of businesses. Among these, the most reliable and splendid one has displayed packaging boxes. These are quite worthy packaging boxes for promotional purposes. Promote your business by displaying the products to the customers even without buying!

Customized Display Packaging Boxes

There exista variety of printing options and die-cuttings for the display boxes. The shape and size of display boxes depend on the dimension of the products. All the display boxes of the same batch must be asymmetrical to each other. The customized display boxes give the brand a perfect image in the competitive market.

All the packaging boxes must have the brand name displayed on them. It fabulously helps in the promotion of the brand too. Hence, people get to know about the brand and can recommend it to others. The customized shapes may include elongated, rectangular, square, or any other shape.

Get the quote online for your desired packaging boxes! Let your branded product fit in the trendy boxes to excel your value in the market! Display packaging boxes are suitable to one’s budget and help them save money for the advertisement of their brand.

Stunning Printing of Display Packaging Boxes

The printing of the display packaging boxes matters a lot. The high-quality printing ensures to create a marvelous effect on the boxes. The appealing boxes are comprised of eloquent designs printed in an impressive manner. Most often, PMS or CMYK printing is used boxes printing. Both of these work fabulous for granting stunning glamor to the designs. The printing with low-quality ink leaves a negative impact. It could lead to fading of colors from the boxes and hence make them look dull or boring.

Using high-quality ink allows businessowners to grab and maintain the optimum level of boxes in the inventory. The printing can be of any solid color or may have glamorous graphic designs. Share the template of digital designing with the printing company and get it in an exact manner!

Additional Packaging Options

The additional packaging options ensure to grant more value and charm to the display packaging boxes. The most significant and splendid options for that you can opt for your business are gold foiling or silver foiling. Besides this, the name of the company or logo can be embossed. The embossing of product names or the motifs of design also seems massively adorable. Other packaging options to consider are PVC sheet, raised ink, and custom window cut out. The window die cut may be of any shape such as circular, semi-circular, heart-shaped, logo-shaped, etc.

Applications of Display Boxes

There are plenty of industries that get benefit from the display boxes. It suits well for the gift industry, toy industry, software industry, and many others. The display boxes offer fabulous protection to the product. These carry the branded products quite well. Most often, it is used for cosmetics, snacks, soaps, stuffed toys, and other such items.

The use of cardboard counter display boxes is quite beneficial as it helps to attract customers. The counter display boxes help in selling confectionery items. The colorful candies, chocolates, wafers within the cardboard counter display boxes become the center of attraction. The customers grab these to try out the taste and become loyal to the brand upon liking.

The report, funded by the Rethink Plastic Alliance and Break Free from Plastic movement, details how charging companies differentiated fees according to the environmental sustainability of their products could incentivize producers to stimulate a more circular economy. 

“Redesigning products and packaging addresses the issue of waste at the most upstream source and places responsibility there,” explains Blaine Camilleri, policy officer at the European Environmental Bureau on behalf of the Rethink Plastic alliance.

The eco-modulation of EPR fees is “an effective way” of incentivizing the redesign of products by making them more sustainable and circular, and shifting the focus of waste prevention to the design phase, he details. 

“EPR fees should reflect the true environmental costs of products and serve as a price signal for consumers to opt for sustainability when making their consumption choices.”

The importance of eco-modulation 
Modulating fees for different packaging materials depending on sustainability criteria such as recyclability is already practiced in various EPR schemes around Europe. For example, infinitely recyclable materials like glass have lower fees than harder to recycle materials like flexible plastics. 

However, in current EPR systems, most eco-modulation criteria, such as sortability, recyclability, market demand of secondary raw material, are primarily focused on improving the recycling of packaging and not on generating less waste in the first place.

Since packaging is not a durable product and typically turns to waste after one use only, product lifetime-related criteria, such as durability, do not play a significant role in fee modulation unless there is an increased focus on reusable packaging. 

The report argues that reusability can play an essential role in reducing waste; however, most EPR schemes currently promote recycling and end up inadvertently discouraging reuse as a more expensive alternative. 

Innova Market Insights has highlighted the importance of reusability as a criteria of waste reduction, marking the “Reusable Revolution” a top packaging trend for 2021. 

The market analyst notes the majority of global consumers (52%) believe reusable packaging is the most sustainable model, followed by recyclable (50%) and recycled (39%), biodegradable (31%) and compostabl

Implementation challenges 

Besides these issues, EU member states also face a range of implementation and enforcement challenges that further complicate the use of EPR systems for waste prevention.

These challenges include:

1) Lack of uniform modulation criteria and fees across member states, which “creates complications within the domestic market and weakens the effort for EPR to achieve the desired results.”

2) Limited availability of data on the real costs of end-of-life (EoL) treatment as well as product specifications, which is needed to estimate EPR fees and eco-modulation.

3) Governance challenges: free riding, reporting and enforcement challenges leading to distortion of EPR internal market by making it difficult for uniform and widespread adoption among producers. 

4) In competitive EPR scheme 

an increase in EPR fees could create a competitive disadvantage for certain PROs. Certain Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) would be impacted more than the others depending on the product portfolio. 

Addressing the issues 
The report suggests supplementing the EU’s current recycling targets with reuse targets, which would provide a regulatory basis for stakeholders involved in an EPR system to develop reuse systems. 

This would require expanding the scope of cost coverage and “necessary costs” to include costs required to build a value chain for reusable packaging. To meet the new cost coverage to achieve reuse targets, EPR fees would have to be increased, which in turn would increase the revenue generated. 

However, care should be taken while increasing EPR fees. Following the principle of waste hierarchy and eco-modulation, EPR fees should be increased for single-use packaging, it suggests. 

Conversely, reusable packaging should be incentivized through lower or no fees for producers to shift from single-use packaging to reusable packaging. 

“The increase in revenue generated will further need to be utilized to develop the logistical infrastructure required to ensure the reusable packaging reaches back to the producers for reuse. This would need sound governance, more data and increased transparency, which a centralized online public register can meet,” concludes the report. 

Using advanced recycling technologies, the site will have the capacity to recycle any plastic used in Sweden using entirely renewable energy, making the country’s plastic economy completely circular. 

Located in the city of Molata, construction is expected to conclude in 2023. It will expand an existing facility, which the company says is already the “most efficient on earth.” 

“We are doubling our capacity and will be able to handle 200,000 tons of plastic packaging per year. This creates the conditions needed for receiving and eventually recycling all plastic packaging from Swedish households,” says Mattias Philipsson, CEO of Swedish Plastic Recycling.

“The investment creates the prerequisites needed for making Sweden a world leader in plastic recycling. Being able to do it together with our producer customers and owners, who consist of large parts of the Swedish business community, is very inspiring.”

Tackling all plastic types 

Currently, the facility recycles four types of plastic; once construction is complete, it will have sorting capacity for 12 types: polypropylene (PP), HDPE, LDPE, PET tray, PET bottles (colored and transparent), PP film, EPS, PS, PVC, two grades of Polyolefin mix, metal and non-plastic waste.

Any small parts of plastic that remain after the sorting process will be separated and sent to chemical recycling or become new composite products. Zero packaging will go into incineration.

“There is today no other facility in the world that has that capability,” asserts Phillipson. 

“We are also preparing for washing and granulation of the plastic in phase two, which is planned for 2025. Then our entire plastic flow in Sweden can become circular.” 

Any materials or rare types of plastic that are unable to be recycled at the facility will be sent to a Carbon Capture Storage, which prevents carbon emissions produced during incineration from entering the atmosphere. There are further plans to run the facility using solar panels. 

Advances in advanced recycling 

PackagingInsights recently sat down with Susan Hansen, global strategist for F&A supply chains at Rabobank, to discuss recent developments in advanced or chemical recycling technologies and what they could hold for the future of plastic waste management. 

She explained that Rabobank has seen a “huge amount of activity” in advanced recycling since 2019. According to the bank’s estimates, there were around 70 plants installed worldwide in 2020, with approximately 1.1 million tons of capacity.

However, Hansen emphasized that chemical recycling should not be seen as a “silver bullet” to the limitations of mechanical methods. 

Even if all the global advanced recycling projects recorded are actually completed, there would be a doubling in the number of plants and around three or four times the capacity there is today. However, this would only mean 140 plants on earth, which would be a maximum of about four million tons of capacity. 

The UN estimates roughly 300 million tons of plastic waste is produced each year globally.