Not necessarily. Food Engineering readers rate food safety as the top criterion for their firms' packaging, though cost is always a consideration.
On one hand, Food Engineering readers who responded to this year's survey rated cost as the fifth most important of 16 factors relating to packaging equipment purchases. Likewise, the cost of primary packaging materials was ranked on a par with consumer convenience in a list of 21 factors impacting food operations in the next two years, and both trailed food safety. The cost of secondary materials was well down the list. (See related chart. Respondents rated factors on a scale of one to five; mean scores are converted to a 100-point scale for purposes of presentation.)