Packaging strategies and industry best practices continually evolve, drawing upon cutting edge innovation and technology to improve outcomes for producers, shippers, retailers, and consumers. As printing, packing, and merchandising capabilities expand, successful turnkey packaging companies respond to emerging consumer trends, devising workable retail solutions for marketing packaged goods.
A popular practice among the many methods conveying products to consumers, shelf-ready packaging continues delivering versatile shipping and merchandising solutions for grocers, big box stores, and retailers operating in various verticals.
Contract Packagers Offer Secondary Packaging Ready for Retail Display
Primary and secondary packaging works in unison, providing product protection, communicating brand messages, and facilitating storage and merchandising requirements for food and non-food items. The most effective packaging solutions cater to unique retail settings, such as big box stores, discount food emporiums, and niche retailers in grocery, health, beauty, and countless CPG categories.
One of the trends continuing to drive packaging innovation, shelf-ready packaging, also known as retail-ready, pallet-ready, and display-ready packaging, creates a value-added convenience for retailers, presenting multiple benefits.
The terms shelf-ready packaging (SRP) and retail-ready packaging (RRP) refer to packing methods enabling retailers to display secondary packaging without unpacking the contents of each box or carton. The strategy often utilizes corrugated material to craft custom merchandising opportunities, which double as both shipping materials and eye-catching in-store displays. In addition to cardboard shelf-ready carton material, reusable plastics are also used to create display cases, trays, and other retail-ready solutions.
Display-ready Packaging is Optimized for Efficiency
Shelf-ready packaging requires less handling by receivers, creating stocking efficiencies without sacrificing product protection or display aesthetics. By reverse engineering the logistics and merchandising requirements of each product, contract packaging companies can now optimize shelf-ready solutions not only for product type and shelf size, but also for quantities, using sales and turnover data to bolster stocking and shelving efficiency.
SRP solutions help reduce costs by cutting stocking time, and the flexible packaging strategy further contributes to increased profitability by stimulating impulse purchases and capitalizing on high quality graphics for heightened brand visibility and easy consumer identification.
By communicating brand messaging and meeting the demand for versatile, efficient shelving solutions, retail-ready store displays not only save money for sellers, but innovative shelf-ready packaging also improves the overall customer experience for end users.
Packaging Companies Meet the Growing Demand for Shelf-ready Packaging
The global shelf-ready packaging market is already valued at more than $60 billion annually, projected to experience compound annual growth of 4%+ through at least 2028.
Flexible, versatile shelf-ready packaging solutions have broad financial appeal for retailers facing high wages and worker shortages, enabling easy, efficient restocking and promoting brisk turnover rates. As discount grocers and large-scale retailers continue driving growth for retail ready packaging, experienced turnkey packagers are well-positioned to meet increased demand, maintaining the equipment, materials, and expertise required to help producers overcome shelf-ready packaging challenges.
In addition to yielding greater efficiency stocking shelves, display-ready packaging also simplifies inventory management, giving way to cost savings and preventing lost sales due to product shortages. Well-designed, custom, shelf-ready boxes and displays also aid damage control, reducing handling points and associated breakage.
Waste-reduction and sustainability benefits further separate shelf-ready displays from traditional secondary packaging, positively impacting the packaging waste stream.
Contract packaging professionals routinely clear common retail-ready packing hurdles, enabling their manufacturing partners to avoid pitfalls and capitalize on cutting-edge contract packaging strategies and services.
Consumption Trends Contribute to Shelf-ready Packaging Innovation
Many consumers have shown willingness to pay a little more for sensible, sustainable packaging. As their disposable income drives packaging choices, modern shoppers’ habits are responsible for increased demand for shelf-ready die-cut cartons. Buyers’ fast-paced lifestyles align with the easily identifiable, responsible, pared-down presentations offered by retail-ready shelving solutions.
For retailers, die-cut secondary cartons facilitate speed stocking and the sturdy containers make efficient use of retail shelf space. Increased consumption of packaged food further contributes to rising demand for versatile, durable, shelf-ready cartons. Boxed beverage tray presentations and corrugated cartons with tear away display-ready cutouts are effective merchandising tools for canned goods, allowing simplified access for shoppers and fewer hours spent facing shelves.
Stand up pouches compete with traditional formats for canned goods and other food and non-food items once marketed in hard sided containers. The durable, adaptable primary packaging pouches lend themselves to standup displays in die cut trays. The pouches stand vertically in stout display-ready boxes with high quality brand graphics, reducing the display footprint when compared to traditional canned good packaging alternatives.
Establishing High Standards for Shelf-ready Packaging
Shelf-ready designs have spread from the U.K across Europe and beyond. U.S. retailers have embraced the benefits of shelf-ready packaging in earnest, requiring a unified approach among supply chain stakeholders. General consensus includes several straightforward standards for effective shelf-ready packaging. In order to clear the informal industry threshold, retail-ready displays should be “easy” in five distinct ways. At a minimum, the best shelf-ready packages should be easy to identify, open, stock, shop and dispose of.
Although principle players agree on the basic philosophies driving shelf-ready expansion, standardizing retail-ready displays presents challenges, due to the varied nature of retail environments. As diverse stakeholders embrace the benefits of SRP, looming problems may include resolving cost to benefit questions at each level, from production through retail sales.
Although major players such as Walmart, Aldi, Costco, and Kroger have elevated shelf-ready packaging to prominence, innovative RRP solutions speak for themselves. Retail-ready packaging upgrades accommodate the modern supply chain, and consumer benefits validate shelf-ready packaging as a viable forward-looking retail merchandising alternative.
Measuring shelf-ready packaging efficacy, the notions of easy to identify and easy to shop focus on the customer experience, illustrating how SRP benefits buyers. The commitments that shelf-ready packaging should be easy to open and shelve point to two of the advantages welcoming retailers that utilize display-ready packaging. Because stores employ an increasingly smaller workforce responsible for stocking shelves, retailers require streamlined packaging alternatives for fast shelving. And with customer preference demanding on-the-go convenience, shelf-ready packaging alternatives are here to stay.
