Quality and safety are paramount in the food and beverage sector. Custom food packaging protects and preserves consumable goods while simultaneously communicating important product and branding details to consumers. This specialized food packaging comes in custom sizes, shapes, colors, materials, and labeling to ideally maintain food product integrity and prevent damage during transport and storage. At the same time, it should have an eye-catching design to help set your products apart from the competition.

Customized packaging must also comply with stringent industry standards and safety regulations to better ensure product safety and consumer well-being. Product labeling should be fully accurate and clearly state a food’s nutritional information, allergen warnings, health claims, and any other details as required by law.

At Point Five Packaging, we specialize in innovative food packaging systems that deliver custom solutions for our clients in the food industry. Our goal is to supply technology that will increase packaging functionality along with product shelf life and appeal while lowering customers’ costs. Read on to learn about the benefits of custom packaging, as well as the various options we offer here at Point Five.

Benefits of Custom Food Packaging

Quality packaging is critical to food safety and, by extension, preserving consumer health. As such, it's important to choose the proper food packaging for your unique products. Custom packaging is particularly beneficial for its ability to:

  • Enhance food protection and safety. Packaging tailored to your unique needs better protects foods from contamination, external conditions, and damage during handling, shipment, and storage. Ensuring the integrity of your food with quality-tested custom packaging will reduce the chance of compromising food safety and endangering consumers.
  • Lengthen shelf life. The ideal food packaging for your goods will extend a product’s shelf life by limiting oxygen as well as bacterial exposure. This, in turn, can lower costs through efficiency and minimized product waste.
  • Entice customers to purchase your brand’s products. Packaging is often a consumer’s first impression of your company and brand, making it a vital component in attracting customers and driving sales. Custom packaging generates a more memorable consumer experience. With creative packaging, you can highlight your brand and show off your products to their best advantage, making them stand out on store shelves.

Tray Sealing

Tray sealing is a popular packaging method the food industry uses by sealing a film lid or covering to a rigid, pre-formed tray. Materials like plastic film, laminated paper or foil, are ideal options for producing the covering, while the tray that holds the food product is often produced from PETE, CPET, PP, Aluminum or laminated paper or pulp substrate.

  • Benefits of Tray Sealing
    Benefits of Tray Sealing

    Tray sealing is well suited to packaging anything from fresh meats, produce, bakery, dairy and ready-to-eat meals and snacks. With tray sealers, you’ll capitalize on the benefits of custom food packaging solutions. For example, tray sealers create a hermetic seal, helping preserve the freshness of perishable products. This airtight seal protects foods against contaminants and micro-organisms that would otherwise result in spoilage. In this way, tray sealing helps reduce food waste. Also, compared to traditional clamshell options, tray sealing allows you to use as much as a quarter less plastic material for more environmentally friendly solutions.

    With benefits related to both form and function, tray sealing enhances packaged products’ visual appeal. Studies have reported that around half of consumers make their purchasing decisions on the basis of a product’s packaging. Therefore, customized tray seal packaging delivers a product presentation that resonates with consumers, increasing purchases and possibly even brand loyalty.

  • Tray Sealing Process
    Tray Sealing Process

    Tray sealers are available as manual, semi-automatic, and fully automatic systems. The right choice for your operation will depend on your application and production volume requirements. The general process starts when trays pre-loaded with food products enter the tray sealer’s in-feed conveyor for indexing and spacing. Then, each tray transfers into the equipment’s tooling via a transfer beam.

    To apply a film covering, a steel sealing plate will engage to lift the tray and press it against the covering material. The heated upper tooling triggers the sealing process, joining the film to the tray while the tray sealer removes excess film through die cutting. After a set time, the plate lowers the sealed tray back to the conveyor to be manually removed or conveyed from the machine.

Modified Atmosphere Food Packaging

What is modified atmosphere packaging, or MAP? This tray sealing technique alters the atmosphere inside food packaging to create the ideal conditions for maintaining quality for your specific product.

Benefits of MAP

MAP food packaging is quite effective for extending the shelf life of foods — by as much as 50%, in fact. By slowing bacterial and mold growth while preventing oxidation-based discoloration, this packaging technique helps protect product integrity as well as aesthetic appeal. Additionally, MAP keeps the inside atmosphere of each package balanced to ensure oxygen can’t prematurely spoil the food while keeping external moisture out.

Benefits of MAP

How MAP Machines Work

To achieve these benefits, then, how does modified atmosphere packaging protect foods? MAP machines extend product shelf life by producing a controlled environment within a food’s high-barrier film packaging. They extract most of the oxygen and replace it with an inert gas mixture.

Through oxidation prevention methods like gas flushing, for example, you can lessen the amount of oxygen and raise nitrogen content, successfully maintaining product integrity by decreasing the risk of microorganism growth, spoilage, and detrimental lipid reactions. Carbon dioxide is another gas that modified atmosphere packaging machines use for product protection.

How MAP Machines Work

Vacuum Skin Packaging

Vacuum skin packaging, or VSP, is a food packaging method that applies a thin plastic film layer overtop a formed container or thermoformed tray.

  • Benefits of VSP
    Benefits of VSP

    VSP is advantageous for the tight seal it creates, its versatility, and its transparency. VSP packaging generates a tight seal around a tray to effectively protect food products from air, moisture, and contaminants, better safeguarding their integrity and preventing degradation. State-of-the-art vacuum skin packaging machines are useful for protecting produce, poultry, meat, fish, pre-cooked meals, and various other perishable goods. With a highly transparent film covering, VSP allows consumers to view these and other products without risking contamination.

  • How VSP Machines Work
    How VSP Machines Work

    VSP machines apply a durable, high-barrier film to a rigid tray or a sheet of laminated paperboard utilizing both heat and a vacuum. As the film warms, it subsequently softens, allowing for enhanced conformability around the product under vacuum conditions within a sealing chamber. Ultimately, this method removes nearly all atmosphere from the packaging, causing the flexible film to closely encase a food as if it were its second skin. The tight seal it produces is quite effective for food protection.

Custom Food Packaging Solutions by Point Five Packaging

From small-scale packaging to high-volume production, Point Five Packaging provides custom food packaging solutions to meet your organization’s specific production requirements. Backed by over a decade of expertise, our knowledgeable team can advise you on the optimal packaging materials and technology to promote product safety and transportability along with process efficiency and productivity.

Contact us today to learn more about custom food packaging options at Point Five Packaging.

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