Traditionally Philips Lighting designs two types of packaging for most of their products.
The Western European market place typically prefers carton boxes and Southern European counties are demanding the products to be packed in blister packaging. In competition with other suppliers Philips also challenged Ecobliss to come up with a packaging design that could serve both, ‘blister’ and ‘box’ countries. The packaging should look “high tech” and protect their beautiful new Power LED lamp range. The packaging should be “free standing” for standing shelf presentation but it should also be “hang able” on a pin. For shelf space saving and transport volume reduction the packaging should preferably not be bigger than the size of the lamps and the packaging should pass stringent drop testing without any problems. The price of the package should obviously be kept as low as possible, and investments in new packaging equipment for this project should be avoided.
Now that’s what we call a challenge!
Ecobliss came up with a truly innovative, and as you may have seen in the stores, the winning design, The Ecobliss Blister Box. The Blister Box is a clear plastic folding box that is partially thermoformed to accommodate a perfect fit for the lamp. The lamp inside the box is completely visible, and the crisp, clear plastic is beautifully printed with the Philips brand and all required details. For the Philips project the front of the packaging perfectly follows the shape of the lamp (partially thermoformed). Also the bottom is thermoformed with the purpose of achieving maximum “free-standing” stability.
The new packaging consists of only a single piece of foldable, pre-thermoformed PET plastic. Even the piece of material that holds the lamp in place inside the Blister Box is part of that single piece of material
Production
Printing is done directly on the plastic in UV offset and no additional insert pieces of plastic and/or paperboard are required. After die-cutting the flat, printed folding cards are thermoformed on the Ecobliss ESP T4, a high volume thermoforming machine especially designed to thermoform flat pieces of plastic in perfect registration with the printed area. (contrary to thermoforming from a roll.
The thermoformed, fold over cards are supplied to Philips where the packing operation of the Power LED lamps takes place. No machines are required for the packaging operation. The Blister Box passed the stringent drop testing procedures of Philips in the first test with flying colours.
Sustainability:
The Blister Box for Power LED’s is designed to use as little as possible material. Because of its shape and design, the packaging is hardly bigger than the lamps. This saves costly shelf space as compared to normal blister packaging, but also transport cost (less volume). The clear PET material can be recycled after use and there’s absolutely no need for separation of packaging materials by the consumer since it’s made of only one material. The amount of energy used for packing is zero.