Roger Cary-Smith, national education officer and chairman of the Packaging Education Board of the Institute of Packaging (SA), says that the studies of these students will be monitored and assessed in terms of acceptable knowledge gain, as well as achievement of the required standard, by the institute's education management authority in SA.
Among the institute's objectives are the promotion and maintenance of packaging as a profession in SA, in addition to a strong educational focus on packaging.
Cary-Smith says that the most significant of these efforts by the institute are the numerous opportunities offered by its five regions for networking opportunities through regular technical and social events and through its one-year diploma programme.
The programme runs from February to October and covers a wide spectrum of packaging subjects.
Knowledge gain is measured by five tests conducted at intervals through the course, by mid-year and end-of-year examinations, and by a six-month practical assignment. Assignments that reach the required standard are entered in the institute's annual student gold-pack competition.
Cary-Smith says successful students could make economically sound packaging-related decisions about material comparison and its inter-relationship with handling points throughout the supply chain. They would be able to establish packaging solutions based on identification and suitability of material for the job in hand, and to understand packaging decoration and printing processes.
He says that successful students will be able to “create and design eminently suitable packages that are not only tamper-proof but become silent salesmen to the consumer, that protect the product from the environment — and the environment from the product — and safeguard the product during transportation”.
Cary-Smith says that the institute's diploma course is the only comprehensive learning mechanism in this discipline in SA and is widely accepted by the packaging industry locally.
“It has shown steady growth in the number of students year-on year, and has been accredited by the World Packaging Organisation, by The Packaging Society (UK), and by the Australian Institute of Packaging, with recognition by other countries in the offing.”
The syllabus is based upon the institute's own publication, "A Handbook of Packaging Technology", and both this textbook and the course itself have established a good reputation, even by worldwide standards, he says.
The institute's lecturers are drawn by and large from practising professionals in the packaging field.
Source: Business Day
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