The Importance of Packaging in a Product’s Shelf-Life.
How flexible packaging enhances shelf-life and balances durability with product quality.
Depending on your background, you’re likely to understand the complexity of the shelf-life and packaging of a product. The best before date is a critical aspect of product management, influenced by factors like flexible packaging solutions and ingredient stability.
The process begins in the product development phase, where you experiment with ingredients and achieve the desired product characteristics. Once the formulation is complete, you test consumer acceptance to ensure the product meets market needs.
Yay! Consumers liked it! Successful feedback indicates that your product is on the right track.
Next, it’s crucial to conduct shelf-life tests to evaluate how long your product maintains it’s quality. This is where packaging plays a vital role. Every natural product will undergo changes and eventually deteriorate over time, making effective flexible packaging essential to extending shelf-life and preserving product integrity.
In most cases, the objective is to achieve the longest possible shelf-life for your product. This strategy offers several advantages, including:
- Reduce food waste.
- Streamlined supply chain processes.
- Increased sales volumes during promotions.
By optimizing packaging and utilizing advanced flexible packaging solutions, you can extend shelf-life and enhance overall product efficiency.
But while it sounds logical to aim for the longest possible shelf-life, it’s important to reconsider this approach, and is here where we find the “shelf-life dilemma” in packing a product.
Why a longer shelf-life isn’t always the best choice: Reevaluating packaging strategies.
The longer the shelf-life, the greater could be the impact on:
- Increased promotion risks: A longer shelf-life can result in more products sold at reduced prices during promotions, potentially lowering your brand’s perceived value if done frequently. Additionally, extended stocking periods may also lead to a loss of aroma and quality.
- Packaging design for recycling requirements: Extended shelf-life needs a robust barrier packaging, often involving more complex, non-recyclable multi-material packaging.
- Reduced reactivity: Longer shelf-life can slow down the ability to respond to changes or innovations, requiring lengthy validation periods that can extend up to several years.
- Increased stock investment: To maintain a longer shelf-life, you may need to invest more in stock to ensure availability.
- Diminish nutritional value: Products with extended shelf-life may experience a reduction in nutritional qualities.
As one of the leading flexible packaging companies in Europe, our primary objective is to protect and preserve your products with the precise shelf-life and characteristics you’ve selected. We also prioritize “Design for recycling” (D4R) packaging solutions, ensuring that our flexible packaging not only extends product durability but also supports recyclability.
How to tackle the best before date dilemma:
Why not explore different approaches? Bring in your Product development, Research and Marketing teams to discuss freshness, intense aromas and understand consumers expectations. Engaging other departments can also provide insights into promotional strategies, financial impacts and overall objectives for better performance.
Let’s rethink conventional methods and work together to find innovative solutions! We can’t wait to hear more from you, email us at contact@adapa-group.com to connect with packaging experts.
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