Ever hear of shrinkflation? We’ll, we are in the heart of it now.
The term refers to manufacturers who subtly reduce the quantity of their product without lowering prices. But they do it quietly. A more in-depth discussion of this retail phenomena is in the June 8 IMPO Insider (No, You’re Not Imagining It — Package Sizes Are Shrinking | IMPO (impomag.com)).
In addition to reducing the quantity, some reduce the size of their packaging as well, which can lead to challenges in handling and palletizing those items.
We often talk about the importance of flexibility in our packaging machines, and this is a perfect example of that. Having the ability to easily program the HMI for handling different product and case sizes is a critical aspect to your case packing operations. This includes fast changeovers as well.
Industry trends influencing packaging can change on a dime. Hopefully for all of us, packaging sizes will soon change again … back to being bigger.