For efficient packs, it’s time to concentrate

So it’s time to take another tack and look at what’s inside the packaging. In the household goods and personal care sectors, a typical product can incorporate as much as 95% unnecessarily shipped water. And yet, as has been proved with laundry products, it needn’t necessarily be so.

As a direct result of Wal-Mart initiatives, the US detergent industry has largely switched to supplying concentrates for use with refillable plastic bottles.

Consumers have readily embraced the format, finding the simple action of inserting a cartridge into the neck of the bottle and just adding water neither a bore nor a chore in the furtherance of sustainability.

With one eye on promoting its green credentials, and the other on stripping cost out of the supply chain, Wal-Mart is now encouraging other FMCG sectors to consider concentrates over conventional formulation for predominantly water-based products.

Globalisation, apart from anything else, is already triggering the same strategy in the UK. What works in laundry can equally apply across a wide range of everyday staples; not least household cleaner sprays, shower gels and even shampoos.

Concentrate technology has been around for some time, but has hitherto failed to catch on due to practicability – inaccurate dosage control leading to lack of confidence – and consumer mind-set. What’s brought it back on to the agenda, however, is the capability of innovative structural packaging engineered to satisfy a growing desire among the general public to do the green thing.

The challenge to the supply chain, and to the packaging industry in particular, is in determining how far the trend towards concentrated product applications can be supported. Appealing to a sense of eco-responsibility alone won’t do it; there has to be stand-out shelf appeal and a focus on consumer interaction as ritual rather than regime. Nor will it be uniformly applicable. We’re a long way from food in tablet form.

Nevertheless, compactness is the natural child of our times. Good things come in little packages. With water readily available on tap, why buy a canister when an imaginatively designed capsule in conjunction with a refillable outer container – far too well constructed to be just dumped after initial usage – will deliver and dispense the contents more resource-efficiently? Go forth and concentrate.

Alex Peacop is principal, FMCG at London-based design agency PDD

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