So what is packaging and why do we need it? Packaging plays an important role in our everyday lives and provides a range of benefits from choice and convenience to ensuring the product arrives safely. Packaging is the name given to the containers in which products are bought, sold and transported, and ranges from cardboard boxes and wooden pallets to plastic bottles and aluminium drink cans.
- Protection - ensuring products reach the consumer in the same condition they left the factory.
null - Hygiene and Safety - ensuring high standards of food safety.
- Convenience - offering time-saving, easy to use features.
- Choice - enabling consumers to choose from a range of products to suit their taste and pocket.
- Preservation - preserving food from deterioration.
- Risk elimination - incorporating specially designed opening devices as protection for hazardous products and tamper proof packaging for food.
- Information - providing consumers with important information such as best before dates and nutritional values for foods, and directions for use.
- Waste minimisation - making a positive contribution to the environment and sustainable development by preventing product wastage.
Packaging life cycle
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nullPackaging is used to protect a product throughout its life:
- Primary packaging is the wrapping or containers handled by the consumer
- Secondary packaging refers to the larger cases or boxes that are used to group quantities of products for distribution and for display in shops
- Tertiary packaging refers to the wooden pallets, cardboard and plastic wrapping that is used to group the products into larger loads for transport
For example, you might buy some crisps in a foil bag (primary packaging), but each bag will have arrived at the supermarket in a large cardboard box (secondary packaging) and these boxes may have been wrapped in plastic and put on a pallet for transportation (tertiary packaging).
