The plastic industry is an important one. In the United States nearly one million people are employed by the plastics industry, which also adds $375 billion to the American economy. Regarding flexible packaging, experts speculate its global market will increase by approximately 3.4% and eventually reaching $248 billion. It also adds to the economy through lower fuel cost for companies that need to ship goods. If you compare glass jars with flexible packaging products, it would take at least 26 trucks to carry the glass and only one for the plastic. But it has another important role, packaging labels are a great marketing vehicle.

In reality, packaging labels are put on to protect the product as it is shipped to the marketplace. What has happened over the years, however, is it has become a way to market and brand a product. The images on the packaging labels define the brand and can either entice a customer to purchase the product or reject it all together. Marketing experts call the packaging labels the product?s ?dress? and is where they can place a logo and slogan.

Custom beverage packing labels, for instance, give the product an identity. Think about the differences between a Coke and a Pepsi bottle. Both have their logos on their packaging sleeves making them recognizable. The packaging labels also provide the place for any other information about the product, which may also serve to entice a person to buy it. Snapple used the space it had to give trivia. There might be something unique about the product that the manufacturer wants the consumer to know.

Packaging labels are very much incorporated into food packaging design as people become more and more interested in the nutritional information about the food they are buying. Things like calorie count, ingredients and whatever vitamins and mineral are present or absent from that particular product. They may also serve to let people know that the product was produced in a factory that processes peanuts for those allergic or that the product is gluten free for people sensitive to that. In addition to being a very valuable marketing and branding tool, packaging labels can be very informative and helpful.

Sometimes it is important to have taper evident packaging and one way to achieve that goal is through the packaging labels which can be placed on a product in such a way as to indicate if any interference with the integrity of the product has occurred. This can be an important feature to protect consumers.

What started out as a way to protect a product during shipping has evolved into a multi-faceted addition to any product. From beverages to foods to just about any kind of product you may purchase, they still provide that important service of product protection but now they do a whole lot more. Consumers expect to find all the information they need on the packaging labels and would most likely avoid a product that did not have it. For instance, if something happened to that bottle of Diet Coke and the label was ripped from it during shipping, a consumer would just buy the bottle next to it with the intact label. They are an important part of any product packaging.