Baking & Snack - November 2018 - 99

EQUIPMENT
Retail-Ready Packaging

Improved product presentation and customer labor savings are a few benefits when secondary packaging is ...

At the

READY

by Karlee Renkoski

T

The goal of retail-ready packaging (also called shelfready) can be explained using the "Five Easies" - easy
to identify, easy to shop, easy to open, easy to shelve and
easy to recycle. It's a more streamlined secondary package design and one that is quickly becoming an American
norm due to major retailers such as Walmart, Kroger,
Aldi and Costco.
The first two qualities - easy to identify and easy to
shop - relate to the consumer needs. Retail-ready provides a consistent appearance by keeping a brand's product in neat rows behind the correct UPC on a shelf. The
brand design on the secondary packaging itself makes a
company stand out as well. "You've really obtained an additional billboard that you can use for all of your product.
If you do a good job with branding and maybe separating
flavors or styles, it helps the consumer make a decision
more quickly," said Rick Gessler, vice-president of marketing, engineering and production, Delkor Systems, Inc.
While creating a package that's easy for customers to find
is a priority, the more important qualities - easy to open
and easy to shelve - relate to retailers. "You will rarely hear
praise about your package design from the retailer or end
user. It is more likely that you will hear about a box if it is
not performing as expected. This may mean the package is
not palletizing effectively, or that it is displaying poorly on
shelves due to rips and tears," according to Delkor's "RetailReady Packaging: A Practical Online Guide."
And all of this is important to reduce labor, retailers' ultimate objective.
"Ten years ago, a case of product required a human
being to pick each one out of the case and put it on the
shelf," said Bill Kehrli, vice-president, sales and marketing, Cavanna Packaging Group. While many consider
retail-ready to be secondary packaging, Mr. Kehrli generally views it as tertiary due to the shipment ability
and layering. "Retail-ready packaging, which is tertiary
packaging, is a package that could be put on a store shelf
and have nothing or the minimal done to it, meaning it
creates its own display," he noted.
With its corrugated tray and cardboard top, typical shelf-

ready packaging is similar to a simple box. However, the
top usually has a perforation or a string that is torn off to
make the products on the tray visible to the consumer.
Retailers have reduced the number of employees who
place and replace products on the shelves, so they need
easy-to-use packaging. "It must be a fast and agile process," said Guilherme Vivona, director of South America,
BluePrint Automation (BPA). "If the product is nicely
placed inside a case with a pre-cut design to detach its upper part, turning it into a display to place in the shelf, results in faster replacement yet tidy presentation."
According to Mr. Gessler, the easier the process, the
more likely employees are to follow correct stocking
practices. Retail-ready cuts down on regular stocking
time as well as rotational stocking because an employee
simply grabs an entire tray instead of one product at a
time. For this reason, some retailers require shelf-ready
packaging or have a goal to reach complete shelf-ready
packaging in the future.
"It's about the lack of labor time to restock shelves,"
said Jorge Izquierdo, vice-president of market develop-

Retail-ready packaging
must be strong enough to
survive shipment and flexible enough for easy open
before being shelved.
BluePrint Automation

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