The Trading Partner Forum has endorsed a trans-Tasman guideline for shelf ready packaging that aims to deliver alignment on key issues, providing a consistent approach across the Australian and New Zealand industries.
The TPF, a forum of the Australian FGC, says the competitive advantage lies in the implementation and in-store execution of packaging options developed using industry guidelines.
It says much of the debate has been on the cost of implementing on shelf ready packaging (SRP) formats sitting with the supplier, while the immediate in-store benefit of increased speed of replenishment sits with the retailer.
The guideline says: “As an industry we need to consider the broader benefits and understand how we can maximise the advantages such as improved operational efficiencies at store level, faster stocking of shelves, improved code rotation, and ease of product identification.
“Having common, agreed guidelines and design principles which are then used by the whole industry is essential to efficient broad scale implementation.
“In a market of Australia’s and New Zealand’s size, it makes no sense to have SKU proliferation as a direct result of minor packaging differences between competing retail organisations.”
TPF says it has worked with retail organisations to deliver the new, more streamlined toolkit that goes some way to addressing this issue.
“The supplier community should expect the retail trade to commit to using the SRP Industry Guidelines; educating their category managers/buyers; working to maintain standards alignment; and most importantly excellent in-store execution.”