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Custom packaging boxes: the essential guide

In today’s competitive market, the right custom packaging can make all the difference, elevating your brand and ensuring your products arrive in perfect condition. When it comes to custom packaging, understanding the journey from design inception to final delivery is crucial. This blog will uncover how Solidus skillfully assists clients through each phase, ensuring that the final product is high-quality and functional and aligns with our strong sustainability principles.

Key advantages and design principles for custom packaging solutions

Custom packaging boxes offer several benefits that extend beyond basic containment, enhancing brand experience, ensuring product safety, and providing specialized features tailored to specific needs:

Brand experience: Custom packaging strengthens brand identity with high-quality printing, vibrant colors, and unique designs. Using sustainable materials appeals to eco-conscious consumers and sets your brand apart in the market. This approach fosters customer loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing by highlighting your unique selling points.
Product-specific design: Tailored features like ventilation holes for freshness, reinforced corners for durability, and transparent lids for visibility ensure packaging meets each product’s specific functionality and safety requirements
Protection: Custom boxes, using advanced materials, offer robust protection against damage and spoilage, extending the product’s shelf life and maintaining quality.

Designing custom packaging requires careful consideration of functionality, aesthetics, material selection, and logistics to create durable, visually appealing, and efficient packaging solutions that align with brand values and consumer expectations:

Functionality and protection: Packaging should be durable and shield against environmental elements like moisture and air, preserving food quality. The correct size minimizes material waste and enhances usability.
Visual appeal and customization: Eye-catching colors, prominent logos, and advanced printing techniques are excellent for communicating essential product information and enhancing brand presence. Tailored designs will resonate with target audiences, boosting market impact.
Logistics and cost efficiency: Evaluating the packaging’s ability to protect products during transit and reduce potential returns will ensure cost efficiency. Investing in quality packaging can lower long-term costs by preventing damage.
Material selection: Choosing materials that offer durability and protection and comply with food safety standards will support environmental sustainability. This includes moisture-resistant liners and robust materials for heavy products.
Consumer preferences: Custom packaging should be designed for easy handling, opening, and resealing, so it’s important to consider the product’s storage needs and how the packaging enhances the consumer experience, combining convenience with aesthetic appeal.
Sustainability: Consumer demand for sustainability is reshaping the packaging industry by pushing companies to adopt practices that are environmentally friendly. Sustainable packaging materials directly contribute to reducing a brand’s environmental footprint by minimising waste and reducing resource consumption. This not only benefits the planet but also aligns with the increasing expectations of shareholders and investors who are focused on ESG criteria. Solidus’ custom packaging solutions represent a 360 degree approach to the increasing demand for sustainable and circular packaging.

designing-custom-packaging-boxes-solidus — Material selection

Types of custom packaging boxes

Custom food packaging is meticulously designed to cater to the specific requirements of different sectors, blending functionality with aesthetic appeal across various categories:

Transport packaging: These ensure product integrity during transit and include bases and lids for stability and protection, machine erected trays for automated high-volume production needs, hand erected trays for flexible packaging of specialty items, and pot plant trays, which are specifically designed to protect horticultural products. Each solution is tailored to the logistical demands of different products, ensuring safe and efficient transport.
Retail packaging: These solutions enhance preservation, presentation, and retail profitability and include Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), which prolongs freshness; skin packaging, which reduces movement and enhances shelf appeal; punnets, which protect and display small fruits and vegetables; and traycompacts®, which is suitable for direct food contact of greasy products like smoked salmon.
Foodservice packaging: Our carbon-neutral Bag-in-Box solution is ideal for packaging and dispensing liquids like oils, beverages, and other liquid-based industrial products. The solid board exterior protects the contents from damage and light exposure while also providing great branding opportunities.

Each packaging type is developed with precise attention to detail, ensuring that it meets the practical demands of safety and efficiency and aligns with consumer preferences and brand aesthetics. This strategic approach to custom packaging aids brands in differentiating themselves in a crowded marketplace, enhancing visibility and customer engagement.

transport-packaging-food-solidus — Transport packaging for food

Selecting the right custom packaging box

The process of selecting the right custom packaging box with Solidus involves several well-defined stages, each designed to ensure the highest quality and innovation. In each stage we ensure regulatory compliance (e.g. EPR waste tax calculations, food safety, recyclability, LCA and shelf life testing). Here’s a breakdown of this process:

Research & Analysis: Solidus closely works with clients to analyze specific needs, assess product details, and define problems to identify areas for improvement.
Conception: Solidus’s team of experts conceptualizes viable solutions tailored to the market in workshops and development sessions, merging these ideas into the best combinations for client needs.
Prototyping & Development: This stage advances the best concepts into tangible prototypes. Solidus rigorously refines these prototypes to unleash their full potential, ensuring only the most effective designs proceed to production.
Production: Solidus oversees the entire process of transforming prototypes into final products, from material selection to the final manufacturing stages. We use circular fibres in our production process to ensure consistency and high standards, reflecting our commitment to circular economy principles.
Turnkey Solution: Solidus focuses on refining products and delivery methods. Our packaging materials are designed to be fit for purpose and future-proof. They provide solutions that streamline the client’s operations and enhance the packaging’s functionality and presentation.

This structured approach ensures that every custom packaging solution developed by Solidus not only meets but exceeds client expectations, emphasizing functionality, sustainability, and market appeal. Solidus’s commitment to innovation, quality and regulatory compliance like the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is evident throughout each phase, from initial research to the delivery of turnkey solutions.