With the region having seen the fastest online sales growth in the world, an increase of USD 15.31 billion in the last 12 months alone, businesses are now interrogating their ability to provide an impressive, intuitive, and creative ‘unboxing’ experience for consumers in what is a hugely competitive market.

Consumers continue to demand more personalised forms of packaging, and a gold-standard unboxing experience is now seen as essential to eCommerce customer satisfaction. It has gone from a differentiator to a must-have.

Essentra Tapes, the creators of RippaTape, SupaStrip, RE:CLOSE, and VakTape, has over 100 years of experience in the production of packaging tape solutions that open, close, inform, and protect packaging. Its total tape solutions help deliver brand communication, protection, authentication, and security, as well as making boxes and flexible packaging easier to open and reclose for consumers.

Eva Kartika, category sales manager at Essentra Tapes, said: “We are clear in where we think we can add value for brands, and that’s with making packaging pop at the point where you can touch your customers most directly – the unboxing experience.

“As brands look to stabilise after the Covid-era eCommerce craze, packaging is an area that is garnering lots of interest. Increasingly, they end up talking with us about our range of tape solutions that can make the packaging opening experience so much more pleasurable. Essentra tear tapes can create easy access to both primary and secondary packaging applications, such as flow wraps, multi packs, or indeed e-commerce corrugated boxes, avoiding messy, ragged tears or frustration in accessing the product.

“Importantly, we’re focused on supporting our customers to develop cost-effective, creative, and visually engaging eCommerce packaging solutions that enrich the consumer experience and support wider brand awareness and marketing initiatives.”

Essentra’s wide range of tapes and applicators means solutions take no additional time and effort to apply to packs, once the applicator is in place. And while a strong tear opening maintains the integrity of a box, whether lightweight mailer or corrugated box, it removes the need for box-cutting tools, which can damage products and cause injury.