An introduction to Lamitubes - Laminated Tubes

Used in FMCG packaging for over 50 years now, Lamitubes are quite popular because of the soft squeeze characteristics it possesses, enabling the almost the entire product to be released from the container with application of pressure.

Timeline of trends in lamitube structures
1970s : Paper, Aluminium foil, and thermoplastic film
1980s : Phasing out of paper based structures.
1990s : Multilayer polymer based barriers
2000s: Sustainability focus: foil thickness reduced to 9 to 12 microns from earlier 30-40 microns
2010s: 40 to 75% PCR HDPE | 50% organic sugarcane based polymer

Printing technologies
Letterpress
Elite Fusion
One click
3D printing
Digital printing

Uses across sectors

With diameters ranging from 12 MM to 50 MM, there are multiple tube sizes in the market with different shapes like oval and round - the basic idea is always to have synergy between carton, print media, and tube packaging.

Self folding structures: the future of packaging?

Haruki Nakamura, the origami artist and paper engineer from Japan, is perhaps one of the most under rated contributors in the field today. His works are amazing, especially how he brings 2 dimensional structures into 3D, and 3D ones alive by adding the component of time to them. You can check out his work on YouTube.

What is more intriguing, is when we take this conversation towards further automation as explained below. This has far reaching implications on interactive packaging- on creating a whole experience out of how the user interacts with the paper packaging. This is exactly what the next level is - experiential economy.


If you have a look here, you can check out the amazing work done by MIT Media labs. Using really simple base materials such as paper, plastics, and fabrics, the designers adequately stitched certain folds and used inflation and resulting pneumatic pressure for the material to automatically fold over itself - resulting in a unique 'alive' origami structure.
Their developed software creates a sort of a key-line that dictates the degree of bending, the geometry etc. that the 2D structure will morph into.

Speaking of work done in the packaging sector by MIT Media labs, another unique publication (follow link here) is where they have introduced wireless sensors (which are of-course really cheap and consume very less power) in labels to identify how the consumer behaves around the product. For example:  a children's milk bottle can play a soothing baby music whenever it is picked up, and whenever the quantity is reaching lower than specified  it can send an order automatically for refill.