General Manager of the Guyana Marketing Corporation’s (GMC) Guyana Shop, Kevin Macklingham has told Stabroek Business that local agro-processors need to raise their game even further in terms of the quality of their packaging and labelling if their products are to be more competitive on the local and overseas markets.
In an interview with this newspaper on Tuesday, Macklingham said that while, in recent years, the quality of packaging and processing in the agro-processing sector had improved “significantly,” both local and foreign consumers were demanding ever higher standards and that, these days, packaging and labelling “probably counts for as much as product quality” with customers.
Macklingham told Stabroek Business that high labelling and packaging costs frequently make the difference between success and failure among enterprises in the agro-processing sector. He explained that what was in evidence increasingly these days is a significant disparity between production costs and packaging and labelling costs in the sector. “There are instances that we have seen where the packaging and labelling costs can actually account for as much as 60% of the selling price of the item.
