Impact of 3D Printing on Product Packaging and Promotional Materials
3D printing has caused great disruptions to the packaging industry. From reducing packaging waste to optimizing packaging design, 3D printing allows brands to make good on their promises of sustainability, quality, and positive customer experiences.
As brand strategists, we know how essential packaging is to product safety and appeal. Not only does it safeguard the product throughout its journey from manufacturing to delivery, but also reflects the quality of the product inside.
According to a Ryder 2023 study, premium-quality packaging “yields positive sentiments.”
Pack a nice product in nice packaging and —
- 50% of consumers would think of the brand as more up-scale and;
- 27% will be more likely to buy from it again.
Directly impacting brand equity, product packaging design plays a central role in your sales and success. Leveraging low-cost printing services along with 3D product packaging, brands can derive these benefits from high-quality product packaging at a much lesser cost.
What is 3D printing? How does 3D printing work?
3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, creates fully-formed three-dimensional objects from either a CAD drawing or a digital design file.
It’s ‘additive’ because it creates things almost out of nothing. Instead of relying on blocks of materials or molds and then removing or ‘subtracting’ from them to give them a certain shape, the process uses filaments, powders, or resins of several different materials (plastic being the most common) to create a physical object from ground up.
Specially designed 3D printers are used for the job. Different printers can handle different printing materials such as powder, resin, and filaments. Some of the latest models of 3D printers can run multiple design cycles simultaneously, accelerating prototyping and production.
Key challenges faced by the packaging design industry
To understand the impact 3D printing has made on the packaging industry, it’s critical to understand the issues plaguing the industry.
• Sustainability
In 2018, the USA generated about 82.2 million tons of packaging waste. 14.5 million tons of it were plastic containers and packaging while 9.8 million tons of it, was glass. Both of these materials are extensively used in 3D printing to create new product packaging. If we decide to recycle our product packaging waste, 3D printing can help us create new stuff using what we discard.
Image Source: iStock/sfe-co2
Yet, not enough of this waste is recycled. Plastic, especially, is a stubborn material to get rid of. In a landfill, it takes hundreds of years to decompose, releasing carcinogenic gasses and toxins in the process that pollute the environment and damage human health.
Since the packaging industry has to ensure product safety from manufacturing to delivery, it must use durable materials that can withstand long journeys and uncertain conditions.
Trapped in a vicious cycle of plastic’s durability and its harmful impact on the environment, the industry struggles to come up with more sustainable answers to the problem.
• Cost pressures
Production costs are rising and the packaging industry is no exception. From sourcing packaging raw materials to manufacturing packaging goods, the increase in costs not only affects the packaging industry but has a ripple effect on all the costs of all relevant processes, such as shipping and retailing.
Image Source: iStock/BrianAJackson
Add to this the fact that traditional packaging manufacturing is a time-consuming process. You have to design various prototypes then produce the designs physically and finally send them for approval.
The more time it takes and the more times the cycle is repeated, the cost continues to multiply ultimately affecting the retail price, too.
• Rapid technological advancements
Advancements in brand-focused print design have increased and refined customer expectations. They now look for things like smarter packaging QR codes, and customized product labels as part of their regular purchase experiences.
To keep pace with these demands, many industries have come to rely on flexible packaging.
Image Source: iStock/Tetiana Kreminska
Flexible packages conform to the shape of the product being packaged, resulting in more efficient space savers. They also look more appealing and modern. Hence, improving brand recognition. Businesses naturally prefer these types of packaging, forcing packer manufacturers to up their ante.
Grappling with high costs, a shorter supply of skilled workers, and slow prototyping, these demands put the packaging industry under much strain.
• Expensive prototyping
Prototyping refers to creating digital or physical samples of packaging product designs to determine their feasibility, functionality, and aesthetics. A packaging designer usually works on multiple prototypes to give variety to the decision-makers. The process then moves on to physically creating the packaging to make final decisions.
Image Source: iStock/Chaosamran_Studio
As you can guess, it becomes a long process in a traditional setting. Quickly, it can become expensive too. Both in terms of the cost and the time it takes to complete a cycle of prototyping from design to final decision.
Not to mention that to make only a slight change in the prototype, the entire cycle has to start from the beginning as traditional printing cannot create materials on the go.
How does 3D printing help?
3D printing services solve all of these challenges for product packaging design. Below is a list to show how.
– It’s environmentally-friendly
3D printing is extremely gentle to the planet. Reducing waste from all stages of production, 3D printing even goes a step further by allowing brands to make most of their product packaging from recycled materials.
Powder-, resin-, or filament-based 3D printers can work with a large variety of recycled materials, most notably glass and plastic, to turn huge chunks of packaging waste into reusable goods.
A significant portion of consumers prefer to buy from brands with sustainable packaging practices. The 2024 estimates for the global market valuation of sustainable packaging suggest it to be worth more than 292 billion dollars. By 2029, it’s projected to reach a worth of 423.56 billion U.S. dollars.
– It supports rapid prototyping
3D printing models are ideal for rapid prototyping. Whether you want to make a single change in the entire packaging design, or turn the whole design onto its head and create something anew, 3D printing ideas can accelerate your creativity.
You can encourage your design team to work on several prototypes at the same time to offer the maximum amount of variety to the stakeholders. Working on different angles of functionality and feasibility, designers can approach the problem from several angles at once and offer solutions through design.
Loreal has adopted the technology on a grand scale in its operations. It uses 3D printing to create functional prototypes for several operations, from spare parts production to product packaging. The company has seen great results from the integration that 25 of its 40 global production facilities are now equipped with high-end 3D printers.
3D printing can help by working on multiple prototypes in one go. Once production is accelerated, decision-making becomes more informed and streamlined. Instead of evaluating one design at a time, the executives can compare and contrast at scale, and arrive at decisions faster, reducing time and monetary costs.
– It can create complex shapes without raising costs
With 3D printing, you are only limited by your imagination. Through its flexible techniques, 3D printing supports a wide range of designs with varying levels of complexity. Since you’re not working with a fixed mold, how you want the prototype to look, feel, and work can be as unique as you want it to be.
Stratasys, an industrial-grade 3D printing technology firm has allowed brands to take their creativity to the next level.
Image Source: stratasys.com
In collaboration with Pepsi, they helped the company design a much more efficient 2-liter bottle for its Mountain Dew brand. Supporting these brands in their brand identity augmentation, Stratasys has helped them explore packaging design solutions that are efficient, unique, and on-brand.
Offering high fidelity to brand colors, brand fonts, and other elements of branding, the company’s 3D techniques have allowed businesses to experience packaging creativity without the high price tag.
– It facilitates custom packaging
Remember Coke’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign? It was a massive and instant success.
Do you know the brand launched it because the company was experiencing a decline in sales, especially from younger consumer groups?
They decided to print some generic first names on their bottle labels to entice customers and offer them personalization and the trick worked. The sales soared and the campaign relaunched Coke with intense vigor all over the world.
Another great example is MakieLab, a startup that used to create and design custom dolls on order. Customers could pick and choose all the features of their dolls, from eye color to jawline, and hair length to ethnicity. Though the startup has been acquired by Disney now, it showed us what 3D custom designing could do.
With custom 3D printing, brands of all sizes can offer these personalization charms to their consumers. Nutella, Snickers, and Vegemite have shown us it works on a grand scale and who are we to denounce these million-dollar campaigns by these world-famous brands?
– It supports time-sensitive sales opportunities
Do you have a large order coming up for a product that has been out-of-stock for a long time and you know the exact number of items that need to be packed?
3D printing can help.
With time-sensitive sales opportunities, 3D printing can manage your product packaging more efficiently and neatly. You can print only as much as you want — generating less waste — and help you deliver orders on time with rapid packaging production.
– It brings packaging in-house
Small and medium-sized brands have to outsource their packaging because not only a packaging station can be massive in size, but it also requires special skills that a regular startup founder may not have. Plus a packaging company would usually have a minimum order requirement before it starts working on your packaging prototype.
Also, they may not be able to handle your custom product packaging request, unless delivered well in advance.
For all these hiccups, 3D printing is a straightforward solution.
It can rapidly iterate packaging designs, create prototypes for testing, and develop custom molds for specialized product packaging.
Personalized packaging can improve too. You can explore unique packaging shapes, sizes, and features in-house without worrying about minimum orders or expensive tooling methods that are associated with a traditional packaging setup.
While it may not be completely feasible to bring the entirety of a packaging production system in-house, doing a bit of it yourself, with your resources can help you simplify your supply chain, facilitate limited-edition production, and innovate with sufficient flexibility.
Is 3D printing an answer to all your packaging and promotional woes?
With such great benefits of 3D printing listed above, it’s important to understand that it’s not a blanket solution for all packaging needs. It’s still a developing technology, though it has come a long way in recent years.
Limitations like rougher surface finishes, material limitations, and costly printing for mass production make 3D printing a solution that you must apply with intelligence.
When working with limited orders, time-sensitive deliveries, or small-scale prototyping with speed, 3D printing outwits the competition by a landslide. In other areas where it lags, put your stock in traditional printing for the best results.