Luxury Coffee: Production Research

In order to produce the product range created for Altitude coffee consisting of a test tube gift pack, full sized boxes and refill packs I've researched different suppliers to see where I can obtain metal containers from. Due to the difficulty of finding suitable metal package, I've decided to produce the full sizes and container for the gift pack out of paper with the test tubes being made out of metal. Consequently this lead me to look at different ways to obtain tall aluminium tubes, during my experimentation I used an old vanilla pod container from M&S which was the perfect size for samples of coffee. However I've had difficulty finding more than one container leading to further research to see if any other retailers sold similar products to M&S, Sainsbury's sell a similar container however it appears to be out of stock both online and in-store (see figure 1). After looking at supermarkets I turned to metal packaging suppliers to sell and print onto metal, from this I found Ashfiled Extensions (see figure 2) who sell various aluminium containers. I emailed their sales team to see if it would be possible to get a some sample tubes, however I'm still waiting to hear back from them, as there is no guarantee they will get back to me I plan to look at other M&S stores to see if I can get anymore vanilla pod containers.

Furthermore I've also looked into printing onto foil lined coffee pouches for the refill packs. However when I contacted on of the few UK based printers, PolyPouch they informed me that if I wanted to print a small number of pouches it would cost around £270 + VAT which was too expensive (see figure 3-4). Despite this PolyPuch offered to send me some free samples of my choice that I could print on or mock up myself. This lead to the idea to print the refill packaging design onto matt clear stickers which could then be stuck to the pouches when they arrive. However in case they do not arrive in time for the deadline I also research other options of which I found numerous offers on sites such as Amazon and eBay with cheapest option being on eBay for £6.50 at a slightly smaller size than those offered by PolyPouch (see figure 5).

In addition I also looked into getting a large box printed featuring the logo which would be foiled onto the lid, to hold the gift set. For this I contacted the Tiny Box Company who offer this specialised service, however one sample would have cost £76 (see figure 6) which is too expensive.  Consequently I've decided to purchase a  large black gift box and print a sticker myself, using the same process used to create the refill packs.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6