Food, glorious food

For the packaging industry to meet the ever-changing demands of food safety, it needs to keep coming up with fresh ideas. Emma-Jane Batey speaks to brand owners and industry decision makers to find out how this is being achieved.

Packaging has a key role to play in the increasingly demanding issue of food safety. A recall can have a huge detrimental effect on a product or supermarket, and faulty packaging can seriously compromise the integrity of a brand - not to mention the legal aspects of failing to meet the latest food safety regulations.

So, at a minimum, how can packaging meet these challenges and, as an aim, how can it add value to the integral issue of food safety?

For supermarket giant Tesco, the importance of food safety is a common denominator across its operations. Employing over half a million people and famous for building world class brands in groceries and general merchandise, the globally-active supermarket with a £69.7 billion turnover takes every element of the supply chain seriously. With the promise that "everything we do is about helping our customers", Tesco has defined four 'big ambitions', one of which is to reduce food waste.

Lawrence Hutchison has over 20 years' experience as head of brand packaging for Tesco, and appreciates packaging's role to "protect and preserve". He tells Packaging Today: "As well as being environmentally friendly, packaging's role to protect and preserve is fundamental to ensure brand trust - but the packaging also has to look good on the shelf and function well when it's taken home."

Brand trust is clearly an important - yet tricky to quantify - element of food safety with regards to packaging. Tesco is currently the only UK retailer to publish data about food waste across its operations. Its adoption of the WRAP initiative 'love food, hate waste' has hints and tips printed on the packaging of many of its products - particularly those that are considered high-waste such as bagged salad. Hutchison continues, "Food safety is a broad issue, and one that packaging influencers have to consider. More holistic collaborations through the value chain will continue to deliver improvements in food safety, but teams must not lose sight of the all-important consumer brand experience - what they feel when they see, touch, store, open, use, reseal and dispose of the packaging."

Stick to it

For one of the world's leading brand owners, this focus on consumer experience is high on the 'how to succeed' list. With over 140 years' experience in the consumer and industrial sectors, Henkel owns instantly-recognisable brands including Persil, Schwartzkopf and Loctite. Its three core business areas are laundry, home care, beauty care and adhesive technologies, and it is the latter that is primarily concerned with packaging.

Csaba Szendrei, head of the packaging adhesives business unit at Henkel, explains why food safety is one of the global group's top priorities. Szendrei said, "Food safe packaging is not a totally new priority for us: we have constantly worked on developing high performance adhesive solutions for the food packaging industry, with the clear focus of minimising consumer risk. It is also a key element of our sustainability effort. We have recently launched a number of special initiatives to support our customers in this, particularly as we have noticed a growing global awareness and demand among consumers for safer and healthier products, which has a significant impact on the global food packaging industry."

As the world's largest adhesives manufacturer, Henkel is "deeply committed" to food packaging safety, this being one of the main applications for its adhesive products. Szendrei added, "We work with customers at the design phase of new packaging solutions and, although regional differences remain, the legal requirements are getting stricter and more complex. To help, we've developed a holistic, 360° expertise around food safe packaging solutions, and we've intensified our R&D efforts in the development of a whole new range of adhesives for associated applications. We also partner with specialised institutions and organise food packaging safety symposiums, involving internal and externals experts in the field."

Look, don't touch

The issue of migration seems to underpin the food safety concern regarding packaging. Migration can cause contamination that can render food inedible, or at least compromise the quality of the food - and therefore the brand. Migration is the transfer of chemical contaminants from the material that is in contact with the food, such as lidding films, so this contact must be kept to a minimum. The structure of the packaging, storage temperature, transportation issues, and the type and amount of adhesive applied to the material in contact with the food are all major influences on the issue of migration.

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is understandably vocal on migration in packaging. A private organisation that was established and is managed by international trade association the European Consumer Goods Forum, the GFSI is dedicated to 'safe food for consumers everywhere'. Its members can be found across the food production supply chain, bringing together a 'vast global community' of retailers, brand manufacturers and international organisations. Its aim is to promote the continuous improvement of food safety management systems to ensure the delivery of safe food to consumers, and its benchmarked standards are now widely recognised.

A senior representative from the GFSI explains, "Over the last fifteen years, major retailers have increasingly been specifying and appreciating the third-party certification of their food suppliers to GFSI benchmarked standards. This sparked an influx of suppliers seeking GFSI certification, which has, in turn, cascaded further down the supply chain to include packaging and packaging materials manufacturers. Today, many companies in the packaging sector are undertaking GFSI certification to help ensure food safety and brand protection, as well as to secure new business opportunities for customers specifying GFSI-certified packaging suppliers."

Food fashion

Packaging consultant Sarah Green, from Greenwood Packaging Consultancy, agrees that food packaging not only has a leading role to play in the integrity of a product, but that it can also offer exciting opportunities for growth. Green tells Packaging Today, "While the simplest function of packaging is to contain the product, acting as a physical barrier to microorganisms with clever use of materials - invisible to most consumers - can also help extend the shelf life of a product and reduce spoilage throughout the supply chain. High-barrier films such as those incorporating oxide coating or EVOH allow the gas-flushing of packs for foods like sliced cooked meats or longer-life bakery products. Other flexible packaging, utilising microscopic perforations made by lasers, can also be used to safely extend the shelf life of fresh produce. These well-established technologies are just part of the solution, and they rely on other aspects of the supply chain, such as temperature control, to work successfully."

Greenwood also explains how smart packaging can be used to boost food safety elements. "Freshness indicators such as labels that can be applied to a pack and indicate when a fresh product is 'going off' have been around for a while now, but they've never really caught on in the consumer food packaging sector, probably due to cost. But there is some exciting research going on in this field, and the next generation of these types of sensors, such as those being developed by MIT in the US using carbon nanotubes, incorporate electronic circuits that can check the freshness of the food inside a pack by scanning it with a smart phone. This kind of easy interactivity could make the use of sensors more desirable, and - who knows? - it could mean that use by and best before dates are no longer necessary. The biggest challenge then would be a leap of faith in terms of the consumer: would you buy a pack of food without a best before date on it? With food packaging increasingly designed to reduce waste, would it have the opposite effect, if fussy consumers reject all but the freshest of packs?"

Customers primarily believe they are choosing to purchase the product within the packaging, but it is perhaps the packaging itself that has the greatest influence on whether or not that product is what they expect - and whether they'll buy it again.