The syrup and honey industry has grown over the last decade due to the increasing demand for natural sweeteners. Consequently, businesses are looking for new ways to package their products to make them more attractive, provide better sealing, and extend their shelf life.
Packaging lines machines provide a cost-effective, automated solution to syrup and honey packaging. Besides making work easier, they help to improve your business productivity and ensure your products are more appealing to consumers.
This article provides a study of the syrup and honey packaging industry. It discusses the market overview, types of packaging materials, packaging design principles, and various packaging machines with their applications.
Syrup and Honey Market Overview
The global honey market value is expected to grow from USD 8.53 billion in 2022 to USD 12.69 billion in 2029, while the global syrup market size, currently valued at USD 2.44 billion, is forecasted to register a CAGR of 5.83% over the next 5 years.
This surge in demand for syrup and honey is driven by many factors. One of the prominent factors is their increased consumption of food products, especially ready-to-eat and convenience foods. Also, the flexibility in syrup and honey production and their ability to impart desirable tastes boosts their market demand as it allows their use as taste enhancers and sweeteners.
Furthermore, with sugars and artificial sweeteners losing their desirability due to their health-damaging properties, consumers now opt for healthier alternatives to sugar, such as natural options like syrups and honey.
The North American region is the leading producer and exporter of all kinds of syrups, with the United States and Canada controlling a major share of the market. This region witnesses a high rate of production, consumption, and export of sweet-flavored syrups and savory-flavored syrups. North Americans prefer to have syrups in many of their food items, including breakfast options, beverages, and as toppings in various snacks, resulting in their high demand in this region.
Due to increasing concerns for health, well-being, and the environment, the North American market has become more involved in organic syrups and natural sweeteners. The Asia-pacific region accounts for the largest honey market share and is expected to dominate the global industry over the forecast period. Their market value is anticipated to be driven by the higher rates of production and consumption of honey across countries with large populations and per capita incomes in this region.
Exporting 145,890 tonnes in 2021, China is Asia-pacific and one of the world’s largest exporters of natural honey in terms of volume. However, New Zealand leads the total honey export value grossing USD 327.15 million in 2021. In Europe, the growing awareness of the health benefits of honey is fueling demand for the product. Hence, this region is expected to follow Asia-pacific in terms of growing revenue and market share.
Syrup and Honey Packaging
Syrup and honey are packaged with different materials depending on the product type. Below are various syrup and honey packaging methods, along with their features, pros, and cons.
Syrup and Honey Jars
These honey and syrup containers are typically made of glass and are available in different shapes, sizes, and colors. These jars are sealed with airtight metal caps that are only opened for consumption of their content.
Glass honey jars with gas and moisture barriers prevent the quick crystallization of honey due to water evaporation and reduce its chances of fermentation by preventing water entry. In North America and Europe, maple syrup jars are used by many producers to ensure a longer shelf life of their products and reduced costs.
A major disadvantage of using honey and syrup jars for packaging is their weight. These packaging materials are usually heavy and highly breakable. This makes them difficult to store and transport.
Syrup and Honey Bottles
Syrup and honey bottles are either made of plastic or glass and come in various specifications, including different shapes, sizes, and colors. Both bottle packaging options are easy to recycle.
Packaging honey and syrups in glass bottles, such as maple syrup bottles, makes branding with logos, labels, and designs easier. This is especially true for glass bottles as their transparency ensures a clear showcase of the branding material while providing a guarantee of the perfect state of the product. Also, due to their flexibility and durability, plastic bottles are considered very ideal for honey packaging.
One of the downsides of using bottles for packing honey and syrups is their breakability, which results in a sticky mess when they fall. Although honey plastic bottles are not as fragile as glass bottles, they are also not as strong as other plastics and are likely to break when they fall.
Syrup and Honey Cans
Metal can packaging is one of the most common packaging methods in the food and beverage industry. These cans are usually made of tin, aluminium, or steel. They are rigid, strong, and durable, allowing them to be stacked on top of one another for transportation and storage without damage.
Due to their chemical inactivity, maple syrup cans offer an increased shelf life as the cans ensure the content is stored for a long and retain its nutrients. Additionally, packaging with cans allows for great flexibility, which means they can be rearranged in various ways and transported without getting deformed.
The main disadvantage of using metal cans packaging for honey and syrups is that they rust under high exposure to acids, salt, alkali, and humid air. However, with the introduction of excellent coatings, this disadvantage can be managed.
Syrup and Honey Pouches
Pouches are packaging materials made from multiple layers of plastic films, commonly polyethylene. Other materials that can be used are PET, laminate, and some metal foils. While most pouches for syrup and honey packaging are heat-sealed, some are bonded by adhesives.
Pouches are strong, durable, and puncture-resistant, which means they can be stored and transported anywhere conveniently. These materials offer the most sustainable method for packaging syrups and honey. In addition, pouches can be easily personalized with logos and designs, easily enhancing the product’s appeal.
However, pouches have a shorter shelf life than other packaging materials as they are more likely to pick up bacteria and contaminants.
How Syrup and Honey Packaging Designs Benefit Your Business
According to various market studies, packaging design is the first factor to persuade consumers to purchase a product. The design of a package has a strong influence on the sales and overall success of the product. In essence, syrup and honey packaging designs are important for your business’s growth and success.
Below are different packaging design ideas and principles that guarantee an increase in consumer attraction and brand recognition.
Syrup and Honey Packaging Material
Choosing an appropriate packaging material confirms to consumers that your business is committed to its products. The materials used for packaging honey and syrups should be durable and effective in protecting against moisture, air, and dust.
Currently, eco-friendly materials are preferred by many businesses because they are usually locally sourced, biodegradable, and recyclable. Using these materials is a way to bring your business closer to customers while contributing to protecting the environment and minimizing waste.
Besides their environmental impact, eco-friendly materials save money for consumers and companies. In fact, it’s becoming a popular trend for consumers to seek out brands that use eco-friendly packages for their products.
Glass is a widely used recyclable material for packaging. Other sustainable materials used for packaging honey and syrups include pouches and eco-friendly plastic bottles.
Secure Syrup and Honey Packaging
Packaging is largely about protecting the content of the package. If the content of the glass, jar, or pouch can be damaged easily, whether during transportation or storage, then there is no use for the packaging material. This is why tight-fitted packaging designs are essential.
Tightly sealed packages prevent air or water from depleting the freshness, quality, and nutrients of honey and syrups. They protect the package’s contents adequately, ensuring longer shelf life. This results in consumer satisfaction and a growing business reputation.
Moreover, the best materials for honey and maple syrup packaging are very durable and strong. Successful packaging designs ensure a balance of security and creativity. Hence, businesses employ various means to keep products safe, such as using screw-top lids for glass jars or metal drums for transporting large amounts of honey.
Packaging Design for Branding
Packaging is the face of the company and is essential to connect your business to consumers. Hence, your honey or maple syrup packaging design needs to pass the brand’s message across, ensuring that your business stands out among competitors.
Branded packaging solutions are a great way to engage customers, getting them to take a closer look by providing information or facts about your products that are important to know. This brand identity system creates and guarantees a relationship with consumers, therefore, the design principles of logos, slogans, and brand colors should be included in your product packaging design.
Other than its marketing benefits and improving your customer-brand relationship, a packaging design with a brand identity shows professionalism and enhances the credibility of your business.
Packaging Design Functionality
With large amounts of waste coming from packaging, it has become imperative for businesses to focus not only on creative packaging but also on what consumers will use the package for later. The versatility of the material should be considered during package design as this is capable of influencing a brand’s image.
Glass honey jars, glass maple syrup bottles, cans, and some bags and pouches represent a type of packaging solution that can have a second life and not be discarded immediately after purchase. It also helps designers to calculate the size and material of the packaging during design to ensure it can be used for multiple purposes.
Sustainable packaging, in terms of reusable packages and multipurpose packages, is now a fundamental marketing choice. It helps improve the perception of your product, making it more appealing to the attentive consumer.
Creativity in Packaging Design
Capturing consumers’ attention is one of the most important features of packaging designs. For your product to catch and keep consumers’ gaze, they have to be beautifully and impressively designed. Furthermore, being innovative with the outline on your glass honey containers differentiates them from competitors on the shelf.
Consumers typically don’t take much time looking at new products and often select a product quickly. This is because they are easily convinced by the most creative package and are more likely to buy that product. Hence, your packaging design needs to have crystal clear messages identifying your brand and information about the product inside.
Many companies now adopt a minimalist package design, which employs a simple and streamlined method of passing the brand’s message across. While this style has artistic merit and is appealing, it is only one of the various ways you can make your product packages creatively stand out.
Syrup and Honey Packaging Machines: To Improve Your Syrup and Honey Production Efficiency
Packaging machines help to facilitate the production process, allowing for mass production over a short period. Discussed below are various types of syrup and honey packaging machines that ensure increased efficiency.
Syrup and Honey Container Cleaning Machine
Due to the multiple industrial processes involved in producing honey and syrup containers, they become dusty and contaminated and require cleaning. Thus, container cleaning machines are used to rinse and sterilize the cans before they are filled. These machines guarantee completely clean bottles and jars, ensuring the products are safe for consumption and comply with global hygiene standards.
The different types of rinsing machines operate in unique ways. An air can or bottle rinser releases air hot enough to sterilize the canning syrup jars without damaging them. In the case of a water can or bottle sterilizer, treated water is used at high pressure to rinse the packages. Lastly, an ionized air can or bottle sterilizer uses negative ions to remove germs from the containers.
Similar to any other food package, containers for syrup and honey require a high level of sterilization. Hence, jar rinsers supplied by Levapack are best suited for your business.
Syrup and Honey Filling Machine
Liquid filling machines come in different types, depending on the viscosity of the liquid being filled. While a liquid piston filling machine is appropriate for more viscous liquids like syrup and honey, a gravity filling machine is best fitted for less viscous liquids, such as juices or other lighter liquids. This machine has several components, such as the rotary infeed table and outward scrambler, that ensure efficiency and ease the packaging process.
The operating principle of a liquid piston-filling machine is easy and direct. First, the conveyor belt receives the empty containers before sending them to the machine. At the filling station, the machine releases liquid into the syrup jars through its nozzles. These machines typically have within a range of two to 12 nozzles for dispensing liquid, where the number of nozzles determines how many containers are filled at a time.
After a batch is filled, the next batch is fed to the conveyor belt and the process continues.
Syrup and Honey Sealing Machine
Sealing machines are used to seal the top of different types of cans, pots, jars, and other packaging materials. They are essential for food and beverage businesses as they help to generate higher profits and guarantee faster production. Can sealing machines are either assembled on syrup and honey packaging lines or used alone.
These machines come in various designs that determine their working principle. The rotary design works by spinning the can while the sealer seals. In contrast, the non-rotary design keeps the can stationary as the sealer seals by spinning. Rotary machine designs can be found in automatic can sealers used in big operations, while non-rotary designs are mostly found in semi-automatic sealers used in local markets.
Another type of sealing machine is the induction sealing machine, which seals containers, jars, or cans with screw caps and aluminum foil inside. The induction sealing process takes place after filling and capping the syrup containers.
Syrup And Honey Capping Machine
Capping machines are used to add metal and threaded caps, plastic snap caps, fitments, and some plug and cork types to honey jars and tins. These machines may either be automatic or semi-automatic. They contribute to the automation of your syrup packaging line, making it more efficient, and helping to reduce production costs.
Automatic capping machines have a lid delivery system that makes their operation easier than their semi-automatic counterparts. First, the lid feeder delivers the lids as the containers move toward the capping zone. Then, the machine places the lids on the container before the ‘press on the head’ applies pressure to secure the cap to the container.
Unlike the automatic machine, the operator manually places the lid on the container in the semi-automatic capping machine process and the machine’s clincher applies pressure to secure the cap to the container.
Working with a first-rate capping machine supplier, you can customize your capping machine to fit specific sizes and geometries to improve your production capacity.
Syrup and Honey Labeling Machine
Hand-labeling syrup and honey cans is an affordable and easy method, but this process can be very slow when handling a large number of products. Automatic labeling machines provide a simpler way to complete your packaging processes. Adding these machines to your syrup and honey packaging line reduces labor costs and fast-tracks your manufacturing operation.
The working principle of this machine starts with the containers moving to the labeling station through the feeding hopper. As the products move through the labeling station, the machine labels the caps or container bodies. In the case of pressure-sensitive labelers, the machine sets a premade label on the cap or container body as the product rotates, while optical laser and inkjet printing machines use a laser to print labels on the containers.
Labeling machines have a wide application, including labeling metal cans, rubber cans, wood cans, paper cans and jars, glass bottles and jars, and plastic jars.
Syrup and Honey Coding Machine
Syrup and honey can coding machines are used to imprint data, such as manufacturing and expiration date, barcodes, QR codes, logos, and other information onto product labels. These machines issue clearly printed codes that aid in identification, stocktaking, and passing across your brand’s message.
Can coding machines are of three types that work differently. A thermal transfer coding machine uses heat and a transfer ribbon with ink to move a code from its print head to a label. For inkjet coding machines, they have a special nozzle that emits codes in dot-sized bits on the product. Other than that, laser coding machines burn the codes onto the cans using laser beams.
In some cases, such as barcodes and QR codes, the machine must be programmed through an external network to provide unique identifiers for the cans. Levapack supplies unique coding machines that also work as can labeling machines to save your business time, cost, and space.
Syrup and Honey Packaging Line
Syrup and honey packaging lines or systems feature different machines that work together in delivering a fully packaged product. This system includes machines used for cleaning, filling, sealing, labeling, coding, and capping. Also in the syrup packaging line is a rotary feeding table, conveyor belt, and outward scrambler, among other equipment.
Honey and syrup packaging machines begin their process when the cans are placed on the conveyor belt. The first step is sterilization, after which the cans are sent to the filling station. After filling, the products are sealed to ensure safety. Then, labels and codes are added to containers using Levapack’s unique labeling and coding machine.
In addition to saving you time and money, packaging lines help you package products as you desire. This is why many industries, such as beverage, food, and chemical, use automated processes like the packaging system to facilitate the packing of their products.
Levapack – Your Custom Syrup and Honey Packaging Line Manufacturer
LPE (Levapack) is a top-tier manufacturer of honey and syrup packaging machines and lines that cater to different canning needs. Our automated products include filling machines, sealing machines, capping machines, labeling machines, premade pouch packaging machines, and coding machines, among others.
We operate out of a 2000 ㎡ factory, equipped with various CNC machinery like milling machines, lathes, and grinders that ensure fast and effective production. Our R&D experts have over 14 years of experience in packaging line development and machine manufacturing. Hence, we are capable of creating the most suitable products for your business.
Levapack machines offer packaging solutions for various applications, including solid goods, granules, pastes, powder products, sauces, viscous liquids, and non-carbonated liquids. These top-notch machines are manufactured with premium-grade materials and undergo a series of inspections to ensure top quality. Certified by recognized industry organizations, like the ISO, CE, and CSA, our packaging solutions are well-fitted for global use.
Our linear and rotary can packaging lines have simple designs, high automation, and low maintenance to enable you to streamline your packaging operations. We offer various options that help you customize these systems to fit your product properties and sanitary specifications.
LPE strives to bring maximum precision & efficiency into your production, thereby saving time, cost, and money. Our pre-sales and after-sales services include an installation guide & training, spare part kits, technical support, and 1-year warranty.
Conclusion
Packaging is essential to every business and is a strong determinant of brand opinion. More importantly, it is critical to protect the quality of syrup and honey, making sure they are not only edible but also retain their freshness. In addition, well-designed and sealed bottles and jars attract customers and extend the shelf life of products.
However, well-packaged products result from effective processes. LPE manufactures various machines that ensure accurate and efficient packaging of honey and syrup containers. For more details on our syrup and honey packaging solutions, you can contact us.