So if we look at methods of tape distribution, even the very first edition of Unix in ~1971 had tap (an early ancestor of tar) [1] which saved & restored filenames, mtimes, modes, and owner info. You could argue that a tp/tar archive is a primitive packaging system.
[1] http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/tap
The other instance I can think of is the shar format [2] that was used to distribute software over Usenet from the early 1980s. Shar was basically a fancy text file that you piped through a shell (yeah, I know). Because binary compatibility was rare, most shar files resulted in a directory of source code, which you'd then compile -- basically, like a 'modern' tarball.
I'd definitely count that as an early packaging system if it had all that metadata with it. So, that pushes it back to 1971 unless a non-UNIX machine had an equivalent before that. Likely a business mainframe or academic machine.