The story of packaging engineers. Meet the Packers!
Most of the time, people are never interested in packages of products. Whether these people are in the supermarket, toy stores, drug stores and warehouses, they just don’t give much attention to the packaging; as long as the package is pretty, it doesn’t matter because they will be thrown away after the products are consumed anyway.
One classic example of that is Stephen Colbert in his show being pissed over tons of packaging layers. Source: Panda Whale
Well, it hurts to the packaging engineers who sweat their ass out in laboratories and computer-aided drafting software just to give the perfect preservation for your products.
Source: Another Studio
Packaging is more than just containing the product: the package needs to withstand certain temperatures, be of certain shape, be tamper-resistant, among others, to properly protect the products from manufacturing down to the consumers. The packaging engineers determine the materials fit to use for the product, may it be cardboard, glass, plastic or wood, which are the most common. They also choose methods and machinery that go into the production of packaging supplies such as carton sealer machine manufacturers.
Source: Giphy
Source: Giphy
Source: Reddit
Source: Imgur
It sounds easy for most of us but in reality, packaging engineering is just as hard as other engineering disciplines. It deals with multiple disciplines like chemical, industrial, materials, and mechanical engineering to perfect the design and create boxes, cartons, bottles and other packing materials that meet specific criteria. There also needs to be coordination from research and development, manufacturing, marketing, graphic design, and regulatory departments to address technical and marketing challenges.
But there is an arising issue to this multi-billion dollar business, as concern for the environmental degradation increases – they have to go green and devise ways to minimize waste by using the least amount of packaging material possible. Efforts to recycle the packages have gone to producing recyclable or biodegradable materials.
Source: Packaging Digest
So there. The next time you purchase a product with a difficult-to-open package, it doesn’t mean to make your life hard. Packaging engineers have a reason for doing that, they just don’t explain it on the label. Or to the very least, the next time you destroy a package of a product which would probably be within the next hour, remember the packaging engineers who made it for you.
