If two products are the same, will you pay more for the one in a showier package? The answer is ’Yes’
All of us are likely to come across corrugated paperboard at one time or another. It is used to package both foods and electronics, but also expensive scents and alcohol, for which the material gives essential added value.
Corrugated packagings are truly versatile. They protect the product inside in all conditions, regardless of weather, temperature or exposure to light. Not only do they open up quite literally, but also in the sense that they can carry markings and text to provide necessary information.
Corrugated packagings are made of a renewable raw material, they are non-toxic and can either be re-used or recycled – and most frequently are indeed recycled.
In the best case, the packaging is the ultimate factor behind a purchase decision, though not many consumers will admit this.
Stora Enso plc’s Lahti packaging site produces corrugated paperboard and also processes it into ready-to-use packagings. The facility takes care of all printing, cuts the board to size and makes the necessary folds. The customer only needs to fold the flat sheet up to the shape required. If needed, the facility can also supply machines to do the folding.
Corrugated board is a many-layered thing
Corrugated paperboard is an ingenious invention. It consists of two paperboard sheets with a third layer of corrugated paperboard, called fluting, glued in between. The finished board may contain from three to five sets like this.
Thanks to the fluting, the structure of corrugated board is extremely strong yet light, resembling the lattice structure in electricity pylons. It is stronger than a solid paperboard sheet of the same thickness, but is clearly lighter in weight and consequently also requires less raw material.
’The biggest cost item in making paperboard packagings is the raw material,’ say Timo Anonen, Head of Product Management and responsible for corrugated packagings at the Lahti facility.
Primary fibre is a good solution in Finland
The Lahti facility gets most of its raw material from Stora Enso’s own mills. The linerboard comes from Oulu and Varkaus, and the fluting medium from Heinola. The share of recycled raw material is negligible, since it is not available in Finland. Even though Finland is among the top recyclers of paper in the EU, the 5.6 million inhabitants simply do not produce enough recycled material.
Importing recycled fibre is not particularly ecological. Besides, the recycling processes also require some primary fibre, because wood fibres deteriorate after 3–7 rounds of recycling, depending on which estimate you look at.
Another factor is that to achieve a given strength requires more recycled fibre than is the case with primary fibre.
’Assuming we have paperboard made of primary fibre and weighing 135 grams per square metre, we would need about 160 grams of recycled fibre to achieve the same strength,’ says Anonen.
Packaging design is a demanding process
The most interesting aspect of packagings is arguably the designing of printing, cutting and folding, so that only folding is needed to arrive at precisely the kind of packaging that is wanted. You can get a glimpse of what this requires if you undo the folds in a packaging and study the resulting two-dimensional sheet of paperboard.
The design process involves an enormous number of requirements in addition to the customer’s wishes. An essential thing to remember is ergonomics. The packaging must be designed to be as safe as possible to handle and use, both during transport and for the end user.
Outi Honkavaara, who designs packagings at the Lahti facility, gives an example: when packaging welding equipment, the height to which a heavy component had to be lifted could be reduced by several tens of centimetres by placing an opening in the side of the packaging lower than in the original design.
During the design process, the packaging is tested in a laboratory where humidity, for example, can be set to correspond to the conditions where the packaging is to be used.
Good packaging attracts the eye
We often forget that packagings are not just about technical properties. In the case of retail products, in fact, the packaging can add to the value and sometimes even multiply it.
Let us consider a half-litre bottle of clear glass, with a black-and-white label saying ’Alc. 40%’. Next to it on the shelf is a product that is exactly the same, but in a more elegant bottle, with a more elaborate label, and packaged in a decorative, four-colour, embossed paperboard box reflecting the brand story. Why should consumers pay up to ten times as much for the latter as for the former?
Strange as it is, consumers really are prepared to pay even more for the packaging than for the actual product. This is confirmed by research results.
The work of designers is, however, invisible to those who use the packagings. To improve the situation, competitions in packaging design are arranged, including the Nordic ScanStar, the global WorldStar the flexo printing competition arranged by the FlexoTech magazine. Flexo printing, or flexography, is a printing technology based on flexible relief plates.
Entries to these competitions must be new packagings already in commercial use. Designers at the Lahti facility have received numerous awards for their work.
’We do, of course, participate to win, but also to compare our work with that of our competitors. Participation is also good publicity and encourages us all to do even better,’ says Anonen.
E-commerce not lucrative enough for all packagers
The Lahti facility makes over 200 million packagings per year, mostly for the domestic market. Anonen says that e-commerce does not provide that much income for the company.
’Large online brand businesses in Europe package their products mainly at their continental facilities close to the consumers. The one closest to us is located in the Greater Stockholm area, and even they don’t use Finnish packagings,’ Anonen says.
The range of different packaging products at the Lahti facility is about 10,000. In one year, the design of about 1,200 new packagings are commissioned from the company. The biggest customer group are food producers.
Stora Enso Packaging Ltd has an annual turnover of about EUR 100 million, some of it from their factory in Kristiinankaupunki, which mainly serves local berry and vegetable growers. According to Anonen, the growth rate of the company is equal to or even higher than that of the market.