Foreign investors find our local food and beverage market a perfect place to invest, and hence all types of food packaging industries emerge without any limits. Many imported products use local plastic packaging industries and sell their product in the domestic market as local products. To quote the best example – Yakult, the Japanese beverage brand!
One more brand that has gained very high popularity in the beverage market is Genki Forest! The confirmed news states that Yuanqi Forest will be investing around 2 billion US dollars in the sugar-free beverage market. But, whether this drink is really sugar-free or not? Or is it getting Pseudo-Japanese marketing propaganda?
The main question here is why these Pseudo-Japanese brands are becoming popular and ruling our market? The main reason is their product container makes them stand out in the crowd of similar products. All the containers are manufactured with the help of In-Mold Labeling (IML Technology). This plastic packaging, bottled beverage packaging, instant noodle packaging, and most of the food packaging undergoes IML technology & hence, the container becomes attractive, and consumers prefer to purchase these products.
Yakult, though is in our market for more than 10 years because of its plastic packaging with the futuristic IML technology, is perceived as our local brand. Almost all the bottled beverage companies use the IML technology packaging method, and hence they gain popularity very fast. For example, the noodles industry expects all their ingredients to be written in detail on the container. Thus, the instant noodle packaging is manufactured with the help of IML packaging. Most of the food packaging is done with this In-mold label technology for maintaining the freshness, hygiene, and increased shelf-life of the product.
In the case of sugar-free products, even Sprite and Coca-Cola are not lagging. The main question is why people are aware of these products? It is possible because of their marketing strategy. Brand positioning and packaging design play a vital role, and hence IML technology is gaining importance for its plastic packaging and food packaging containers. It is clearly mentioned on the plastic packaging that instead of sugar, they use �Erythritol’ that is also sweet but does not fall in the sugar category.
Hence, the question is still unanswered – Does the sugar-free claims made by various food and beverage companies are really “Not Fat”?