How Packaging Development Can Make Or Break Your Product

In an interview at Pack EXPO Guy Wray, Marketing Manager, Mocon - provider of permeation instruments and leak detection equipment- talks about the importance of package development and how it can effect your bottom line. Wray also explains how product shelf life permeation problems are often attributed to hasty, last-minute package development.  

  
Interview Transcription:

Todd S:      Before we get into our conversation, Guy take a few seconds and inform the audience about you and your background.

Guy:           Okay, I’m an Australian so I’ll speak slowly so you can understand.

Todd S:      We’re good.

Guy:           I’ve been in Minnesota for 27 winters and I’ve been with MOCON for 8 years. So my background has been marketing for the last 20 plus years, and I’ve learned an enormous amount of packaging and permeation and headspace and all of that at MOCON. I don’t think anybody understands how big the packaging industry is until they come to a show like PACK Expo.

Todd S:      I agree with you on that. If I’m doing my math right, 27 Minnesota winters is equal to like 3 years, something like that.

Guy:           Very close to that, yes.

Todd S:      Tell us that 10,000-foot view of MOCON. What do you do, how do you serve your market?

Guy:           We offer permeation instruments for testing the barrier rate of packages. It’s very important. I think most people understand that oxygen and CO2 and water vapor actually impact on the shelf life of the instrument.

                  Now, if you don’t know what your barrier is, are you keeping the oxygen out enough to serve the life cycle that your food engineers or your pharmaceutical engineers have decided that they need to do it.

                  So we provide permeation products to determine that. We provide the products for headspace, leak detection, MAP, modified atmosphere packaging gas mixers and gas sealers. So we serve that whole section of this packaging industry.

Todd Y:      Give us another level of detail on the shelf life permeation thing that you just started talking about a little bit.

Guy:           One of the biggest problems with shelf life is that the development of the package may be done at the last moment. What happens then is in order to create a barrier, they over engineer it. They put too much material in there.    

                  They send the product out, the product is a success, the next thing they want to do is reduce the cost of the product so they can do better in the marketplace. A packaging gets attacked, okay, we make the package lighter and that can actually ruin the life of the whole product. It may be that you have to go back and engineer it in such a way that it’s no longer a success.

                  What’s also happening is that we’re moving away the green barriers. So glass, of course, is the ultimate barrier. Once you start putting it into a plastic or a resin, that permeates. So beverages used to be in glass. Now, they’re in plastic. But you want the same shelf life so you have to find out what do I have to do to get the same shelf life with the plastic that I’m going to wrap it in now.

Todd S:      Are there and if so what are the advantages to understanding permeation rates at the beginning of that package development process?

Guy:           You can save a lot of money by doing it upfront in the development state. So when you start thinking you have a valuable product to take the marketplace, start looking at your packaging at that point. Start developing your packaging at that point. You’re going to save money at that point. You’re going to get to market with the right package.

Todd Y:      You just said “save a lot of money”. Can you put some parameters around that like how much or a percentage? I’m just trying to get a better grip around just how big, how wide the savings may be.

Guy:           It’s very hard to put a number on that simply because you might have a small package, you might have a big package. I couldn’t even give you a percentage. But products have failed in the second stage because of changes they make to the packages.

Todd Y:      You’ve said that twice now in the second stage, I mean, what would you do differently the first time through? Or why is it such a dramatic impact?

Guy:           Because it’s left to the last minute, people over package or under package. Under packaging means they don’t have enough barrier to protect it and give it the shelf life. So then the product fails.

Todd Y:      Right. I get that.

Guy:           So to stop failing at that over package, so you got weight issues, now you got shipping issues, then you’ve got to go back and reduce your costs, okay now I’m going to change my package structure, got to put a lighter resin in there. I’m going to spend a year developing that.

                  So while it’s out on the marketplace, I’m losing money shipping heavier products, I’m buying more material than I need, I’m filling landfills, I’m doing all sorts of nasty things to the environment.

Todd Y:      Yes, and lots of energy uses, too.

Guy:           Lots of energy, lots of energy, yes.

Todd S:      So I’m working hard to understand how the value you bring and I’m getting it. Walk me through how a manufacturer can get educated as to how you can bring value to them, what steps do they need to take really understand what you provide.

Guy:           In the United States, in Canada or in Europe we really have a mature marketplace. So it’s the people who are coming new into the industry particularly in the pharmaceutical sides or the medical devices sides where they don’t have an in-house packaging engineer, right?

                  So what we can help them with is the educational material that we provide through webinars and seminars. We find that LinkedIn is a tremendous resource. We are using LinkedIn on a business day-to-day basis to publish educational material to help people who are just coming in to develop these new pharmaceutical products and new medical device products.

Todd S:      That’s a great tool. LinkedIn is becoming less of a social network and more of a publishing platform.

Guy:           Correct.

Todd S:      So that’s going to really suit that strategy very well.

Todd Y:      Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about innovation. That goes hand in hand when you’re talking about packaging. Just talk about how MOCON drives innovation.

Guy:           Well, we actually invented the first permeation instruments that were commercially usable 50 years ago. Today, at PACK expo we have in our booth our very latest generation products and they are light years of what… the way I like to describe again if you look in the products that we’d be selling very, very successfully for the last 20 years and you take the cover off them, you’re looking into the engine compartment of a 1980’s car.

                  Now, if you look into our fully automated permeation instrument, you’re looking into the engine compartment of a luxury sedan. It has (0:07:34), it has a touch screen. You don’t need to know the characteristics of your phone and put it in there and set it automatic test and it will give you an accurate result every time.

                  So the innovation on these products, we’ve spent 4 years developing them. We’re introducing them here in the United States right here at PACK expo. The users who have used our old instruments before are just being blown away by the innovation of these products, the time saving at their end.

                  Not just that they’re good products but they’re saving them money, they’re saving them time, they’re getting better results and the cost of ownership is lower.

Todd S:      Guy, you’re showcasing some material here. I’m going to assume you have some stuff in the pipeline as you’re thinking and looking forward 5-10 years. What should we be looking for MOCON and in terms of continuing that grand innovation?

Guy:           Our two main permeation instruments are OX-TRAN, that’s our brand for our oxygen permeation instruments and PERMATRAN. What we’ve put out is one of each at this point, we have them in a variety of ranges. So over the next 3 years, we will bringing out the lower range instruments pretty regularly over the next 3 years.

                  Somewhere in that area, we are also looking at a whole new issue, the design to impact particularly on the pharmaceutical, medical device industries which is volatile permeates, which is all these other things that are flowing around in the air.

                  Everybody’s very comfortable with water vapor, oxygen and carbon dioxide. But now the need for surgical and the pharmaceutical products and the food products are starting to be concerned about these volatile permeates which are carbon-based permeates.

Todd Y:      Is that the kind of questions you’re getting asked here? Is it around these volatile?

Guy:           We already test for those so yes, we are getting those questions. The question now is is it in fact possible to create an instrument that is small enough and effective enough if you have to make one and sell it as an instrument can go into some of these labs. We can do it in our labs right now but we use larger instruments to do that.

Todd S:      Got you. Alright. Well, Guy I hate say it, running low on time. Before we let you go, how can people get in touch with you and learn more about the great work out of MOCON?

Guy:           You can find us at www.mocon.com of course. I do recommend that anybody who wants to be up to date with what we’re thinking, our educational material, find us on LinkedIn which is just MOCON Inc. on LinkedIn.

Todd S:      So they can search for MOCON and go on LinkedIn and connect with all your material there. Good stuff.

Guy:           Yep.

Todd S:      Alright. Guy Wray, marketing manager with MOCON. Guy, it was great to have you. Thanks so much for joining us.

Guy:           Thank you for inviting me.

Todd Y:      I appreciate your insights.

Todd S:      The pleasure was ours. Alright. Well, that wraps this segment. This has been Life Science Connect Radio. Todd and Todd signing off from Chicago. Our live coverage will be right back.