What do Altoids, Heineken and Bosch all have in common? Funky packaging that moves product. Nerac talked with Dr. Dan Abramowicz, Executive Vice President of Corporate Technologies at Crown Packaging Technology, about packaging trends among food and beverage producers and the latest innovations in old favorites such as metal and glass.

NERAC: What packaging trends do you see driving the market?

DAN ABRAMOWICZ: Some things have happened over last five years that have challenged the price premium for high-end brands. Private labels and others have closed the quality gap. When I was young, we thought the generic brand, with its black-and-white, nondescript image signified less quality. Today, in general, with most products that quality differential has been minimized in the consumer’s mind. The other piece is the emotional tie and how companies achieve it in a fiercely competitive market. Companies have to spend more money to reach more targeted markets. Packaging has a unique role to play at the point of sale, commonly know as “the last two seconds in marketing.” Establishing a brand identity and linking with the consumer is a top priority for our clients. Crown clients are looking for more innovative ways to differentiate themselves, whereas five to 10 years ago they wanted cost reduction. Today there’s a real pull for more innovation.

What are some of the primary ways that Crown helps customers develop unique packaging designs and technologies?

It’s nothing novel but Crown’s framework includes seven dimensions or ways our customers can help build their brand:

Visual Appeal. What’s your differentiation on the shelf? Consumers primarily use color and shape to identify a product. If you develop a proprietary shape or color, you’ve got a powerful way to differentiate your brand on shelf.

Innovation. What can you do that’s new and different? This can take many dimensions. Altoids made a material decision on their product and used the material to position the brand. This increased the emotional ties with Altoids’ already loyal customer base.

Convenience. What convenient features can you add that the consumer values? Consider packaging technologies that offers easier open-ability, pouring, turning, or value-added features that consumers are willing to pay for.

Brand Protection. Technologies to prevent counterfeiting and tampering for companies with global products are improving. Novel shapes and novel technologies can prevent counterfeiting. For anti-tampering, you want independent ways to open the container, such as the metal and plastic closures that Planter’s Peanuts uses.

Sustainability. Companies can increase their environmentally friendly efforts by using minimal materials, recovering materials used through recycling, or finding a way to convert packaging to other useful materials such as biopolymer composting. Consumers react to unnecessary packaging, such as a 2-inch flash memory and 12-inch plastic clam shell.

Speed to Market. Innovations are important but if they take time and money, then it’s a disadvantage. Getting your innovations out there before the competition and producing something that doesn’t require change in infrastructure or filling lines is important.

Emerging markets. Emerging markets have two dimensions. One, new markets such as the Internet, which didn’t exist years ago. Two, the global marketplace. For consumers in different markets, requirements differ. For example, shelf heights differ in Europe, or in India, people buy small quantities for daily use; whereas, buying in bulk is more prevalent in the States. Brand owners want a global image, so when appropriate, being able to deliver that as a supplier is important.

What are some of the cutting-edge technologies at Crown that you can discuss?

Crown has recently commercialized improvements in printing on beverage cans. Traditionally, beverage cans have a lower quality image than other metal packaging. Developing a high-quality printing process at high speed (typical speeds of 2,200 per minute) will improve container image. This is a technology we’ve commercialized in Europe and gives something close to photo imaging.

One that has yet to be commercialized is a re-sealable metal can. What makes a beverage can what it is today is long shelf-life and low cost. At 2 billion containers produced per year, metal is the most economical and viable option because it’s fast to fill at plants versus the bottle (2,000 cans per minute versus 500 bottles). The real Holy Grail is to develop re-sealability that retains all of those advantages. By the end of this year, we hope to be in the market with a product that accomplishes just that.

Another technology innovation in food is LiftOff PeelSeem™ ends. A flexible foil lid on a can offers a nice convenience because it’s easy to open. Marrying the flexible foil lid with metal bowls produces an attractive ready-to-eat package for high quality such as meat salads and provides a much more premium, modern image than traditional cans.

RFID is important, too. The challenge is that the tags we use today do not work with metal and liquids. They alter the frequency and the detectors won’t pick up the signal. Crown has teamed up with QinetiQ to solve the problem by taking the original technology and developing a clever antenna system for packaging. The technology is sophisticated but simple. We envision ways to integrate these tags directly with the manufacturer by printing the conducting layer on top so basically we can print the tag when we produce the can. Embedding the antenna directly into the product is a very exciting approach. The technology is already proven on the case level and is in development at the single item level. QinetiQ has been involved in a number of trials that has successfully proven its effectiveness.