Founded in 1990, Caspak has long been regarded as a leader in flexible barrier packaging, offering smart, innovative and progressively environmentally responsible solutions.
Ryan Falconer, National Sales Manager at Caspak, has observed that customers are looking for packaging partners who can solve several challenges at once: protecting the product, delivering the required shelf life, running efficiently through production, providing value, and increasingly meeting environmental expectations.
“A few years ago, the focus was often on reducing packaging use. Today, customers are asking much more sophisticated questions about the materials being used, recyclability, resource efficiency, and what happens to packaging at the end of its life,” said Falconer.
“For the food industry in particular, packaging plays an important role in preventing food waste. The most sustainable package isn't necessarily the one that uses the least material; it is the one that protects the product effectively while using resources as efficiently as possible.”
As customers increasingly want technical expertise from their packaging partner, not just a product catalogue, the process for Caspak starts by understanding the product and what the packaging needs to achieve. For a food product, that could mean protecting it from oxygen or moisture, preserving freshness, maintaining aroma, or providing the required shelf life, as well as how the product will be filled, sealed, transported, and stored.
Caspak’s approach is to identify the required performance level and engineer the packaging around those needs. A packaging structure also needs to work reliably on the machinery being used, at the required production speeds, with consistent sealing and handling.
Especially where machinery is part of the process, early collaboration between the packaging supplier, manufacturer, and machinery provider can identify potential challenges sooner and make the transition to a new format much smoother.
This is particularly relevant as businesses look to introduce more recyclable or lower-material packaging. New structures can behave differently from traditional ones, so successful transitions require testing, communication and a willingness from everyone involved to work through the practical considerations.
The end goal is a packaging solution that protects the product, works effectively within the customer's process and delivers against the relevant commercial and sustainability objectives.
Rather than relying entirely on external testing, Caspak’s in-house laboratory can also investigate different options, make adjustments, and validate performance as part of the development process. That is valuable when developing a new packaging solution because a material can look very different on paper than it does in a real application.
“The laboratory gives customers greater confidence that the packaging has been properly assessed for its intended use and helps us identify potential issues before they become production problems,” added Falconer.
The most important thing, Falconer mentioned, was to start with the application rather than assuming one material is right for everything. For example, food packaging needs to protect the product and deliver an appropriate shelf life. If changing the packaging shortens shelf life or increases product waste, the environmental benefit may not be as straightforward as it first appears.
Depending on the application, the best opportunity might be reducing material, changing the structure, improving recyclability, or moving towards a different packaging format. Caspak’s focus role remains helping customers understand those trade-offs and find the most appropriate solution for their particular product.
“Sustainability should be about making a genuine improvement, not simply selecting a material because it sounds more sustainable.”
With Caspak’s eyes firmly on supporting a more sustainable packaging futurethe future and the green revolution, Falconer believed the biggest advances will come from improving the performance of materials already better suited to recycling, while also finding ways to use less material without compromising product protection.
He has also seen interest in downgauging, material-efficient structures, mono-material approaches, and new barrier technologies.
However, the challenge will be making those solutions work not just from a materials perspective, but across the entire supply chain through better packaging design, more efficient material use, and closer collaboration among packaging suppliers, manufacturers, and machinery providers.
