Retailers and manufacturers have to constantly modify the design and information on their products, sometimes voluntarily in order to drive or follow the market, and sometimes to meet changes in regulation.
In response, Trace One launched its new Packaging Portal in December 2012 (which is fully integrated into its Private Label PLM system), to help manage and streamline these processes, reducing time-to-market by 20%.
The Trace One portal is designed to help retailers prepare for upcoming EU legislation on the standardisation of product packaging, allowing them to make changes to product labelling across the whole of their beverage ranges with minimum cost and disruption.
The portal also allows retailers and manufacturers to better manage long-range products, allowing them to introduce seasonal promotions without needing to revisit all product specifications.
With labelling, retailers and manufacturers face a difficult three-way balancing act. First, they have to obey legislation on packaging from bodies, including the UK government and the EU. Second, they have to satisfy a public that’s increasingly savvy and aware of the impact packaging can have on their purchases. Third, they still have to make their packaging as eye-catching and informative as possible.
Recent consumer research showed that over 80% of consumers stating that packaging could mislead them to make unhealthy food purchases, with 65% admitting that packaging and labelling impacted their purchasing decision.
This leads the beverage industry into a catch-22 situation: while they want to promote the nutritional value of their products, over-simplification of labelling in order to follow legislation can in fact end up more misleading for consumers.
For example, milk is marked as red in the nutritional traffic light system due to its fat content, when its health benefits should place it clearly in the green.
The industry will have to work out how to strike a balance between presenting the information required to maintain compliance and educating consumers about the real nutritional values in the food they are eating.
In the year ahead, the key areas of innovation are going to involve the speedy and accurate gathering and dissemination of information. This will not just be between manufacturers or retailers and their customers, but across the entire product line. Collaboration will be an increasingly large part of the design and production process.
Essentially, producers and retailers will need to share information more often and in more detail to ensure that production is fast and accurate. A key way this will be achieved is by increasing the transparency and traceability of ingredients and communicating this to consumers through packaging and labelling, as well as to each other through increased collaboration.
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