Sealed Air’s New Profile Printing Enables Graphics Without Distortion

Visibility and brand recognition on the shelf are desired traits—making your company’s package stand out in a sea of similar-looking items.

But when rounded packaging prevents a brand’s name from being immediately visible to the customer browsing that shelf, it’s even more difficult to differentiate.

For this reason, Olé Mexican Foods sought a solution for its queso fresco packaging. The problem? Queso fresco is typically sold in round, puck-shaped packages with brand information only printed on the top and bottom. In the store, these packages are stacked on top of each other in the retail dairy case, which means shoppers only get a brand-less side view of all the packages lumped together.

According to FTA member Sealed Air, Mexican food accounts for just over 60 percent of the ethnic food market and is highly competitive. Olé Mexican Foods wanted its package to stand out, but how? Sealed Air came up with a solution, determining that printing on the profile of the thermoformed package was the answer. The technology was developed over the course of a few years and was launched with a limited customer base in 2017.

“Olé had an ideal package that could benefit from this technology and saw the benefit of reclaiming unused space on its package for improved branding,” says Deborah Sepulveda, NA director, SEE Graphic Services at Sealed Air.

The Process

Once Olé Mexican Foods decided its package needed to somehow stand out on the shelf, it consulted with its former film supplier about printing on the thermoformed package—but the supplier declined. Olé Mexican Foods reached out to Sealed Air, which was determined, with its graphics and packaging experts, to make it happen. The goal? Develop a solution that would balance cost and performance, as well as provide clear, readable graphics on a thermoformed profile.

Because printing on plastic that will be thermoformed must occur prior to forming, the graphic design must account for the distortion caused by the molding process. The problem is that getting a suitable end result can be tedious, time-consuming and expensive.

Luckily, a tight collaboration between Sealed Air and the Moreno family, the owners of Olé Mexican Foods, meant the project trials ran smoothly, and resulted in proper sizing and placement of the artwork on the profile of the queso fresco packaging. SEE Graphic Services at Sealed Air customizes the print setup based off the tooling dimensions and thermoforming process conditions to account for distortion during the forming process. This customized setup yields crisp and high-definition graphics on formed, finished products with minimal distortion.

“We leveraged our previous experience of accommodating distortion for printing films with high shrink and adapted it for use on formed webs,” comments Sepulveda. “We then worked with some of our customers to help them reclaim unused space on their package for branding. This technology can also help get rid of labels for some formed web applications.”

One challenge of perfecting the formed profile printing technology was that each combination of tooling and horizontal thermoforming equipment has a unique impact on web distortion during the forming process. “We had to combine our knowledge of different horizontal thermoforming equipment with distortion printing to design printed webs that will work in each unique customer application,” notes Sepulveda.

This type of printing technology not only creates an increased graphic footprint and improved brand/packaging callout placement, but also allows for even more placement options to help a package stand out on a shelf. It eliminates graphic distortion, and in addition, bar codes can be placed on the side and/or bottom to increase package scanability.

Result

Olé Mexican Foods now can boast that its queso fresco was the first Hispanic cheese product in the dairy case to let consumers see the brand without having to pick it up—The graphics are easy to read at a distance on a visually pleasing package, resulting in a unique and immediate brand recognition.

On top of a visually pleasing package with graphics that are easy to read at a distance, Olé’s product has immediate brand recognition that no other cheese brand has. Olé has applied the new packaging to two different brands and a total of eight SKUs. The company says that as a result of the new packaging, it has seen a 16 percent increase in sales over an eight-month period. Because it saw great value in the queso fresco solution, Olé is consulting with Sealed Air to solve more of its challenges and deliver industry-changing innovations.

“This technology allows our customers to reclaim unused space on their package for branding,” concludes Sepulveda. “In particular, this technology allows expanded branding opportunities so consumers can identify products from multiple display arrangements on the shelf.”