Advantages of Spout Pouches

Compared with common packaging formats, the most striking advantage of a spout pouch is portability: it slips easily into a backpack or even a pocket, and it shrinks in volume as the contents are consumed, which makes it easier to carry, whether it is being taken to work, to school or out of doors.

In structure, a spout pouch has two main parts: the spout and the stand-up bag. The bag section matches an ordinary four-seal stand-up pouch in construction, but composite materials are generally used so that it can meet the requirements of different food packaging. The spout can be regarded as an ordinary bottle mouth fitted with a straw. The two parts are joined tightly to form a beverage package that supports sucking, and because it is flexible packaging there is no difficulty in drinking from it; once sealed, the contents do not shift about easily, which makes it a very good modern beverage package that is comfortable to drink straight from.

On the market today, soft drinks are mainly packed in PET bottles, composite foil packs and cans. With homogenised competition becoming ever more obvious, improving the packaging is undoubtedly one of the effective means of competing on differentiation. A spout pouch combines the reclosure of a PET bottle with the style of a composite foil pack, and in printing performance it has advantages that conventional beverage packaging cannot match. Because it follows the basic stand-up pouch format, its display area is clearly larger than that of a PET bottle, and better than pillow-type packs that cannot stand upright, whose display is limited by comparison.

Of course, since a spout pouch belongs to the flexible packaging family, it is not currently suitable for carbonated drinks; but for juices, dairy products, health drinks and jelly-type foods it has a natural advantage, and it is in these categories that the format has spread most quickly.