When packaging products, businesses must first assess and evaluate stock to determine the best and safest packaging method for delivery. There are three main levels of packaging a product can undergo while being prepared for delivery. In this blog, we’ll focus on the three different levels of product packaging to discuss why businesses should have packaging strategies in place.
Primary Packaging
The primary packaging of a product is the most immediate form of packaging that encapsulates merchandise. Primary packaging is known as retail packaging and is the most recognizable to the average customer. You can use services such as Packaging Chimp to help you include simple materials such as plastics and paper. It is also the most immediate form of protection between company products and external hazards. The primary packaging of a product may also differ significantly from other brands and merchandise.
Secondary Packaging
Although there are different levels of product packaging, primary and secondary packaging often get confused or overlapped with one another. It’s also possible to apply multiple labels with heat shrink labels for bottles or heat shrink sleeve labels for bottles. They’re similar because they both include retail branding on packaging materials.
However, while primary packaging is the most immediate form of protection to contain products, secondary packaging is the next layer of retailed boxing. For example, if the for-sale product is a soda brand, the primary packaging for the product is the soda can, and the secondary packaging is the boxed pack of soda cans. Secondary packaging provides the second layer of retail packaging, which also protects against possible damage.
Tertiary Packaging
Tertiary packaging includes more extensive protective materials such as corrugated boxes, air cushions, and bubble wrap. This packaging is assembled in warehouses where products are securely wrapped and organized on different layers of wooden pallets, using pallet wrappers.
Warehouses use wooden pallets to safely store large quantities of stock while shipping merchandise to different stores and distributors. In order to avoid tertiary packaging failures, businesses should be aware of proper pallet uses to prevent damages. This level of packaging provides the safest enclosed packaging for product deliveries. Retail brands and advertising is not often present in tertiary packaging.
Knowing the difference between each of these packaging levels is critical to avoiding delivery failures. Businesses should organize a packaging strategy that assesses all products and matches each product to the proper level of needed packaging. Proactively managing the packaging of products will prevent damaged stock and ensure customers receive their products conveniently.