Some people celebrate the coming of spring by cleaning their house from top to bottom. Judging by the plethora of ads on TV, in papers and magazines, some go out and buy a new sofa. Others are happy to redecorate their homes. It’s almost as much a part of spring as Morris dancing, mummers and green men.

This spring, one of the warmest on record, we scratched our heads, looked at the new growth in the woods beside the warehouse, listened to the amorous croaking coming from the frogs in the pond and realised it was time for a change.

Pretty much since we started - some three decades ago - we’ve specialised in producing competitively priced and conveniently packaged dry goods and now have a range that includes most grains, fruits, pulses, and seeds you can name and even a few you probably  can’t. So we thought, since this is obviously what we’re good at, why don’t we invest a little time and effort in making these foods an even more attractive proposition? So we did.

Point of sale psychology revolves around catching the consumer’s eye in the first instance, giving them something new to look at that excites their curiosity and invites a closer look. With this in  mind, we’ve come up with what we believe to be some truly fresh, innovative and striking graphics that not only give our products greater shelf presence but also help to reinforce the brand values we have worked hard to establish. In order to keep up continuity so consumers will find it easy to spot the product they usually buy, we have used colour routes that follow on from existing Suma designs.

Fairly traded produce will be packaged in purple, bearing the ‘fairly traded’ legend in white; wholefood lines are in orange packets, marked with ‘wholefood’ in white, and organic foods in green, labelled ‘organic’ in white.

Because shoppers like to see what they are buying, we have included a large window in the packaging, which serves as another aid to rapid recognition – not everyone wants to spend time reading and digesting (sic) the information on the label.  To satisfy those who do and the powers that be, however, we have included easy-to-read information about ingredients and nutritional values, as well as cooking and storage information on the larger packs.

At this point our consumer can spot our goods on the shelf, can pick up the pack and examine the contents, find out about its nutritional value and even how to prepare it.
However, because we know our customers, and we know they are the kind of people who put a bit of thought into what they buy and what they eat, we realise we have a duty to put just as much thought into how we supply them.

We are still using recycled card for the rip-top outers, which now form convenient shelf-ready display solutions, while the inner packs are made of polyprop. We decided against paper because it would have to be coated in order to be sealed and incorporate a window and this in turn adversely affects its recycling properties. Cellophane was ruled out, being highly energy-intensive in production. Polyprop is a film manufactured from two polymers (LLDPE and VLDPE) which form food-grade polyethylene. It is stable, tear resistant to minimise spoilage, and – most importantly – is easily recycled.