A packaged food product must satisfy various requirements like safe processing, preservation, protection, easier distribution as well as adherence to legislation.
Additionally, the growing levels of classiness among consumers and changing marketing trends have resulted in higher expectations in terms of consumer convenience in product buying and use.
In India, we produce world's largest dairy output and second-largest fresh fruits and vegetables stock.
No doubt - this mammoth size production also requires sophisticated supply chain, state-of-the-art packaging methods & techniques for systematic forward of this scarce produce to end the consumers.
Forlornly, the universally accepted statistics shows that every year India loses more than 40 per cent of its produce due to pathetic packing & packaging, handling and transportation.
Into the bargain, environmentally, there is rising pressure on minimising the use of packaging as well as ensuring recycling of post-consumer packaging which again pitches for smart packaging methods and machineries at all levels for sustainability in coming time.
"Still there is a long to way go but from past few decades our grass root packaging techniques have improved phenomenally. Currently, most of our packaging techniques emphasises on reduction of damages & wastages. We still need to match our overseas counterparts in the area of quality assurance. This calls largely for an attitudinal change, both in the government and in the mindset of the industry. The Indian government, the packaging industry and research institutes should work hand in hand to come up with innovative packaging that can enhance the shelf life of perishables," Meraj Khan, proprietor, GADs Packaging Solutions, said.
Therefore, understanding and promoting specific processing and packaging technology options that promote food safety as well as environmental sustainability are vital to the success of the processed food industry.
"The Indian consumers still tend to favour the lowest priced items, often overlooking the advantages brought on by new technologies and innovative service providers. They need to be sensitised to the fact that a slightly greater investment in innovative packaging will go a long way in making their products more market-friendly and ultimately result in long-term gains. An attitudinal change in the customer will undoubtedly prompt manufacturers of latest packaging to pay due attention to quality assurance," Khan added.
Current agri packaging materials
The Indian agriculture sector widely uses packaging to move raw produce to a manufacturer for processing and to major mandis like APMC where the fresh fruits & vegetables get escalated to local market.
The country has cheap and abundantly available natural packaging materials which are generally employed in fabrication of packages.
Here, packaging encompasses a wide range of material types across paper, board, plastic, glass, wood and other materials. The most important packaging materials used are paper and board (39%), followed by plastic (30%), wooden rucksack (baskets) (about 20%). Other packaging materials such as glass bottles and containers are also used for premium products like dry fruits.
According to researchers, bamboo and arhar containers of varying sizes, shapes and stacking strengths with paddy straw or green leaves as cushioning materials are used extensively. However, these packages suffer from lack of dimensional stability, poor compression strength and other defects associated with improper weaving and faulty design. These materials are used for packing fresh fruits like mangoes. Knotless netting is used for onions, lemon and oranges, plastic wrappers with or without expanded polystyrene tray for cucumber, cauliflower & cabbage, moulded pulp trays or cartons for raspberries and strawberries.
Machinery
At present, country's far and wide scattered farmers' uses automatic horizontal packaging machines. Petite pre-weighed products like beans, peas, carrots, and broccoli are packed on horizontal packaging machines.
PE extruded nets have become popular to pack onions, potatoes, garlic & ginger, and hard fruits like ber. Rachel bags are also used to used to pack 25-50 kg produce at farms.
Veena Mathur, advisor, specialty polyethylene's marketing and development, Reliance Industries Ltd, said, "PE pre-formed bags will become more popular with growth in organised retail business. PP Thermoformed trays and Stretch Cling films will find wider applications when large fruits and vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, gourd, and melons, are individually wrapped for enhanced shelf life. Thermoformed PP trays can hold 4-6 large fruits with Stretch Cling Wrapped films for good visibility and shelf life." She was speaking on "Packaging trends in organised food retail," at a seminar on packaging recently.
"The food packaging market, in particular agriculture produce packaging has progressively grown in the last few years thanks to the rising usage of packaged food as grocery multiples take share away from specialist butchers and fruit/ vegetable shops, and increasingly shift to central packaging operations to reduce waste and control stocks more effectively. Other key growth drivers include the rise of smaller sized households, leading to increasing units of smaller pack sizes (smaller pack size = bigger total volume of package waste), as well as the shift from metal, glass and other packaging to plastic packaging in areas such as premium products like dry fruits & spices," Meraj Khan added.
Trends
Light weighting/down gauging: The European Union (EU) with its environmental legislation has been encouraging companies to reduce the amount of packaging used by "light weighting" of materials that is reducing the weight of material used, with examples across metal, glass, plastic and paper and board packaging.
Down gauging refers to reducing the amount of material in a product while still maintaining or even improving the properties of that material. EU's major fresh fruits & vegetables exporters like Brazil & India are quickly adopting state-of-the-art technologies to light-weight their packed produce.
Light-weighting is the most relevant trend highlighted in Northern European countries such as Sweden, the UK and also in France.
Recyclability: Huge numbers of consumers from developed countries are increasingly aware of environmental issues and efforts that producers are making with regards to using recycled packaging do not go unnoticed
In one of the recent survey, 61% of the EU consumers showed preference to purchase products from a company that uses recycled paperboard packaging.
The study also found that 77% of consumers felt better about a manufacturer who used recycled paperboard and 80% felt they were "doing something good for the environment" when they bought products with recycled paperboard packaging.
