Domain 4 - Packaging

In domain 4, we're trying to find the ideal packaging for our product in order to achieve our goal which store the product in frozen form. Food packaging plays an important role in food production. Food packaging is the packaging for food to provide a physical barrier to the food product and also provide information of the food to the consumers. Food packaging has 4 primary functions towards the food product, manufacturer and consumers as well.  Food packaging is able to provide protection barrier against damage or contamination by microbes, air, moisture and toxins, this allows food products to be safeguarded against rough transportation and possible fraud occur during transporting the food product to ensure the food product is able to meet the requirements in terms of physical, chemical and biological needs.

We have tried out a lot of different material for our packaging such as cardboard, paper and also plastic as well. At the first stage, we have tried to use paper to build our first prototype. It comes out a lot of problem from paper packaging which can't hold the product due to the paper is very flexible and soft. Furthermore, the paper packaging it's highly anti resist to water unless the paper have cover with a thin plastic layer. However, we can't get this kind of packaging and we decided to go for cardboard packaging

First Prototype packaging from us

In addition, we needed to analysis the nutrition content of our product to generate the nutrition fact of the product. Nutrition facts is the essential information provided with every food and it is a must to include in every food packaging to provide nutrition information’s to the consumer. Percentage of Daily Reference Value (DRV) was obtained through U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The Nutrition facts of the commercial dumpling product were generated using Nutrient Analysis interactive tool provided from Chinese Community Health Resource Center.

Are you talking that our product is high in calories content?? Haha ;)

Other than packaging, we are requested to design our sales sheet as well. A product sell sheet is usually used to attract customer’s attention to a new product. Sell sheet needs to provide sufficient information to ensure that potential customers understand the unique selling point of the new product. The goal of the sell sheet is to make people interested enough to find out more about the product and eventually buying it. A short explanation or description and specification are also crucial to be included in the sell sheet. The value proposition of the product has to be presented well and clear. The contact number, website, or other communication platforms can be included in the information given to potential customer

 

Example of sales sheet of our commercial product

In this domain, i have learnt thinking and problem solving skill in order to find the way for our ideal packaging. Although we all have faced a lot of obstacles to find out our ideal packaging, we all still managed to solve and overcome the problem to get the final ideal packaging which really attractive and appealing. Furthermore, we have enhanced our discipline specific knowledge in order to apply the ideal to the practical which learnt form the lecture. This probably will help us to understand the ethical issue and get used to the field that we may faced in the future.