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Packaging crucial as food items extremely vulnerable
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Sunday, 16 February, 2025, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Dr Nikita Basant
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Packaging plays a vital role in protecting and preserving products throughout their shelf life. Furthermore, it has become essential for packaging to include pertinent product information, like nutritional facts and storage guidelines.
Nonetheless, the materials and techniques used for packing frequently differ based on the kind of product being packaged. Generally speaking, packaging has a number of important functions, such as information distribution, marketing, transportation, anti-counterfeiting, tamper-evident security, and physical and barrier protection. There is more focus on preserving nutritional quality and shelf life for food products such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meat, dry fruits, baked goods, and sauces.
Food items are extremely vulnerable to microbial infection and spoiling, hence the type of packing material used is crucial. Packaging materials with certain qualities are needed for some products, such as fruits and vegetables, in order to control the ripening process. The packaging material for foods including meat, dairy, sauces, and baked goods must maintain organoleptic properties while extending shelf life and offering protection. The primary goal of every packaging operation is to guarantee the quality of the product being packaged. For food goods, dietary supplements, and therapeutic formulations to retain their standards, extra attention must be taken during packaging.
Types of Food Packaging in India
In India, packaging is divided into primary, secondary, tertiary, and ancillary categories according to its intended use (Table 1). Additionally, it is categorised by kind of material, such as metals, glass, paper, plastic, and paperboard.
Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis for the Food Packaging Industry in India:
SWOT analysis for the food packaging industry evaluates its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, providing insights into market trends, operational challenges, and growth potential. It helps businesses adapt to consumer demands, sustainability goals, and regulatory changes in a competitive landscape (Figure 1).
Cutting-edge technologies in food packaging
Packaging techniques are changing to maintain freshness and adhere to international safety regulations as food consumption expands worldwide. This change entails implementing cutting-edge technologies to satisfy market demands, worldwide standards, and customer preferences.
- Nanotechnology: By adding intelligent and active features, boosting food quality, and facilitating supply chain tracking, nanoparticles are improving food packaging.
- Robotic Technology: By facilitating quicker, more effective operations, robotics simplifies food packaging procedures, especially for products like frozen meals. Storage, shipping, inventory control, and general productivity are all improved by robotic systems.
- Retort packaging: Sterilised at high temperatures, these flexible, heat-resistant pouches prolong shelf life, keep tastes intact, and prevent spoiling. Constructed from PET films and laminated plastic, these lightweight bags are perfect for handling and storing medications and prepared foods.
- PET Packaging: PET is one of the most popular, cost-effective, light weight polymers commonly used for packaging purposes. As PET can be moulded into many different shapes and does not have high water or solvent permeability and saves transportation costs.
- Aseptic Packaging: Here, food and packaging are both sterilised separately in a separate way before bringing them together in a sterile environment. In this type of packaging, food safety is assured, there is increased shelf life even without refrigeration, transport and storage costs are reduced, and environmental impact is reduced due to aseptic packaging. It is highly popular in the global food and beverage industry.
AI enabled advancements for the Food Packaging Industry:
Artificial Intelligence is changing the face of traditional ways in India’s food packaging industry by focusing on issues like sustainability, quality control, food safety, and operational efficiency.
The rising demand for packaged products due to urbanisation, changed consumer behaviour, and the increase in e-commerce is boosting AI’s capability to enable waste reduction, real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and advanced quality assurance. Computer vision and machine learning improve spoiling prevention, supply chain optimisation, and defect identification.
As India’s government invests in more food processing programmes such as ‘Make in India’, the use of AI in food and beverage industries should be encouraged to ensure sustainability in the food packaging sectors and efficiency in various operations. By investing in these AI-driven technologies, both small startups and already established businesses would give India’s food packaging sector a leap towards sustainability.
In this context, AI is not only a process improvement tool but also a catalyst for rethinking the future of food packaging in India, which is safer, smarter, and more sensitive to the requirements of both the environment and customers.
AI in food packaging offers several advantages, such as quality control through tracking temperature and humidity changes and shelf-life prediction to reduce food waste by improving inventory management. Supply chain optimisation reduces waste and costs by better inventory, demand forecasting, and route planning, but real-time monitoring ensures safety and quality by measuring packing factors. It ensures compliance with regulations and enhances customer safety through allergy detection by using automated, precise food labelling. AI allows for personalised packaging for temperature and nutrition control, identifies tampering for increased security, and encourages sustainability through material analysis and optimisation.
(The author is head-Centre of Excellence (AI & ML) & associate professor at Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow. She can be reached at nbasant@lko.amity.edu)
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