Brand owners will be able to get speedy prototypes and digital renders of their new pack and brand designs following a significant investment by Brandpack in next generation packaging and branding tools. Brandpack, the branding and design business of Colorpak last month (September) officially opened the doors to its new Packaging Centre of Excellence centre, co-located with its Melbourne headquarters.
Building on its “one-stop-shop” philosophy for packaging design, the new facility is set up to enhance design work for existing and potential customers by making use of the
latest digital design and rendering tools as well as Brandpack’s in-house technical expertise.
Brandpack itself was established last year to consolidate the existing packaging design business of Colorpak with the Montage Graphics business it acquired as part of its purchase of Carter Holt Harvey’s (CHH) carton business.
Brandpack is headed up by general manager Peter Allison, who took on the role after joining the company from CHH.
Speaking to PKN ahead of the new centre’s official opening, Allison says the new Centre of Excellence is designed to add even further value to the company’s existing packaging design offerings.
“It is really a place where we will offer a variety of packaging solutions to our customers above and beyond our existing Brandpack services,” Allison says.
“In a nutshell, the customer can walk in, sit down and discuss what they are after with a variety of packaging and design experts.
“They will be able to see how that design can be made to work on a pack, and how it will look on shelf by using a 3D virtual environment.”
Allison, who presented a preview of the future of packaging design in a 3D digital environment in a presentation at this year’s AIP National Conference in Queensland, says the combination of in-house expertise and software for “imagining” various pack design concepts in a virtual supermarket setting meant customers could gain a near-instant appreciation of the effectiveness of new pack concepts.
“A customer can arrive in the morning and leave in the afternoon with not only a total packaging concept made up in various substrates and materials, but also an idea of how those concepts will work in a typical retail environment.”
He says mock-ups of packages can be produced quickly and easily.
“We have a digital press in-house, as well as a digital large format cutter, so we can cut and create samples and mock-ups of new design concepts while the customer waits.”
Brandpack’s 3D virtual supermarket software, he says, which it has sourced from a third party, was one of the most advanced tools available for digital pack design and visualisation.
“The 3D virtual supermarket design software lets you see what it would look like on an actual shelf in a real supermarket. The 3D rendering means you really get an impression of the full impact of a pack design,” Allison says.
“And it can be tweaked, for example, to show how the envisaged pack would look on different types of shelves and display areas, and how the placement of the pack can be enhanced by different placements within the store environment.
“It gives instant, visual feedback of just how effective a design concept is likely to be in the real world of the retail space.”
As well as the Design Centre of Excellence, the new Brandpack facility houses the company’s digital plate-making capabilities.
The centrepiece of this is new plate-making technology aimed at the high-end flexographic market.
Dubbed Inspire, the plate-making technology is the result of almost a year of research and development work by Brandpack staff.
