A Food Packaging Technician designs, develops and manufactures packaging for a range of food and drink products
Food and drink packaging serves many important purposes. It stops contents from being damaged, ensures food and drink are safe to consume by preventing contamination, and carries important product information about ingredients and where they’re sourced from. It is also designed to attract customers.
Packaging equally needs to be manufactured easily and should use materials that are biodegradable or can be recycled. This helps to stop packaging going to landfill, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and limits litter pollution on land and in the sea. You could be the technician that helps to produce informative, attractive, safe and environmentally-responsible packaging, to protect products, people, and the planet.
As your experience grows you will be responsible for designing new packaging or finding ways to improve existing packaging for all kinds of food and drink.
With technology improving all the time, you could also be involved in enabling further automation and making sure packaging is consistently produced wherever it’s made, anywhere in the world.
There’s no perfect career path or ideal way into your dream job.
But if you’re interested in education and training options that could be relevant to this role, you might want to consider:
Options available after GCSEs:
Schools and colleges each have their own career guidance plan and can provide detailed information, advice, and guidance on options and next steps.
You’ll use your creative and technical skills to develop ideas for improved or new packaging and build examples to test whether your ideas will work. Part of your time will be office based and the rest will be on production lines, overseeing tests in collaboration with packaging engineers. You’ll also work with graphic designers and see your final packaging on the supermarket shelves every day.
