Innovative packaging at competitive prices

The full life cycle of packaging now touches all aspects of business today. It is important to understand the impact of packaging, from cradle to grave, as it plays many functional roles from protecting contents to helping the user to advertise the product. But its main job is still seen as one to help sell the product at the point of purchase.

Most products are of no use (or at least undifferentiated) without their packaging. Just take a look at any shampoo fixture and think about how you'd chose one from another. So, once functional considerations are completed the most important design consideration is how best to create and tell a story that stands out from the crowd as how Mead Lee does it, says Nadishan Guruge, Director, Mead Lee Trading Company (Pvt) Limited - manufacturers and importers of high quality flexible packaging material.

A well designed pack must also address the needs of its life cycle. This life cycle runs from the moment it is used to wrap its product (whether by hand or in a factory), to the point of sale, to the point of use, and finally - with current tough environmental laws - to its after-use. There are thousands of products competing for shoppers' attention in all the stores and, according to various research findings; a pack on a supermarket shelf has less than three seconds to grab that attention. This doesn't mean that packaging necessarily needs to be loud or simple - but it must be clear to the audience for which it is intended and in this context - packaging created by Mead Lee would communicate with shoppers in a supermarket in a subtle way and would tell them " Buy ME..I'm Good for YOU..!", he said.

Mead Lee - a premier rubber exporter, ventured on to packaging in 1990, when it found that Maliban Biscuits could retain their flavour and increase their marketability when they permitted Mead Lee to drape their products in Mead Lee branded high quality flexible packaging solutions and from then - " we have broadbased our portfolio to engulf medium and large companies," he emphasised. Mead Lee has manufacturing facilities in Taiwan and China and the state-of-the-art Japanese printing machines in these factories could print any number of colours on plastic, he said.

"We could supply packaging in roll form to be used in automatic machines or in bag form for use in manual packaging and we are specialized in standup pouches with caps suitable for liquid packaging and for vacuum pack packaging used for frozen food", he noted. Mead Lee branded environmental friendly films and bio-degradable films have become popular, high growth film in the market because of a unique combination of properties such as high barrier, stiffness, transparency, saleability, twist retention and barrier that's ideal for flexible packaging use for confectionery, tea, coffee, spice, ice cream, dry products, liquid and hot filling, he added.

"Our factory at Pepiliyana undertakes a range of value-added services for customers like graphic designing, rotogravure printing, cylinder making, adhesive lamination, extrusion laminating, metallizing and in line bag making and, we are by far the only company absorbing 50% of the cost of gravure printing cylinder cost of our customers and help them pass on the benefit to their consumers.