With the packaging sector striving towards the adoption of sustainable solutions, the demand for retail-ready packaging is incredibly expanding, giving brands across the retail marketplace chance to make a switch.
Speaking of one such development, Linpac Packaging recently launched a new range of rigid-plastic, retail-ready packaging. The firm predicts that its retail-ready packaging solutions boast of a high level of flexibility, offering more structurally sound packaging, and better impact absorption.
As per the latest report by Global Market Insights Inc., the market for retail-ready packaging will continue to expand at a significant growth until 2028. It is foreseen to reach $85 billion by 2028.
What makes retail ready packaging highly approachable for retailers, suppliers, and customers?
High operational costs at retail stores are one of the areas in which retailers have been always trying to scale down. For a while now, retailers have started to work on areas where operational costs can be reduced – labor. As a matter of fact, 20-30% of retailers’ costs are associated with labor, including locating products in stock, displaying, and disposing of the leftover package. This could be solved by taking the product directly from truck to shelf, eliminating the need to unpack items. Here’s where retail-ready packaging comes in.
Given below is an overview of benefits the RRP can render to retailers, suppliers, and customers:
- For retailers, retail-ready packaging results in cleaner stores for customers and triggers impulse purchases, while supporting fewer gaps on the shelves.
- For suppliers, the seamless transition process from warehouse to shelf results in better in-stock availability. It also improves their positioning and visibility at the store level, thereby enhancing the chance for sales.
- For the customers, the packaging helps make the shelf to shopping cart transition smooth to augment the shopping experience.
In 2020, Ornua Foods UK launched Megablock, a novel packaging solution that was conceived to deliver 40% saving of plastic per packet of Pilgrims Choice cheese, with an anticipated reduction of 83 tons of plastic annually. Reports suggest that the new Megablock will come in optimum-sized retail-ready packaging containing more packs in every case. Such a paradigm shift to RRP is projected to have a positive impact on the overall retail-ready packaging industry outlook in the forthcoming years.
Predominantly made of corrugated boxes, which represent 50% of the total demand, there are other different types of RRP options available in the market including counter displays, pallet displays, and case stackers. These are used across a plethora of industries including food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and others.
Elucidating the use of RRP across the food sector
Shoppers turn to organized retail stores for buying food, beverages, and other grocery supplies. Retail ready packaging is extensively used in these stores for stocking food products to entice customers, leading to impulse sales. The technology is mainly designed to reduce in-store labor cost for loading products on shelves. In addition, it also boasts of other benefits like more opportunities for advertising in the store than conventional packaging, easy availability in a larger number of stores, reduced need for packaging material, and opportunities of empowering the business brand.
RRP producers are seeking extensive opportunities in retail-ready packaging from the food storage applications with retailers continuing to hog on the technology.
To illustrate, Delkor, in 2021, unveiled a retail-ready tray-hood case design for pet food products. Dubbed Cabrio Case, the product is built of a single piece of corrugated board which is perceived to be highly effective than 2-piece designs. It also features a pre-cut tray front to deliver design flexibility and shelf appeal.
Pharmaceutical industry: a prominent hub for the retail-ready packaging market
While popular for the F&B industries, retail-ready packaging can also be employed with pharmaceutical products as over-the-counter drugs. This would make locating the pain reliever much easier in a retail environment. The industry generally makes use of counter display packaging to keep shelves accessible and organized, thus enabling customers to easily find and retrieve their required OTC products.
Elaborating further, with the rising cost of shipping, the effective packaging that comes with retail-ready designs can help pharmaceutical firms save considerably on storage, materials, and transportation.
With pharmaceutical sales accounting for 49% in North America of the world sales and 23.9% for Europe in 2020, the demand for retail-ready packaging products has now escalated significantly. The growing prevalence of trauma, as well as chronic and bacterial diseases, will undeniably boost the production and consumption of pharmaceutical products.
The budding trend towards retail-ready packaging has emerged in light of the cost-down initiatives at the retailer level and the surging demand for sustainable packaging products at the consumer level. Industry experts believe that this novel innovation will equip consumers with their pain points, making the shopping experience a smooth process.