CEPIEC

I recently attended the 2008 Packaging Summit Expo in May and came away noticing a few new trends gaining and some old standby's on the decline:

Sustainability was highlighted in many of the exhibitor booths. Biodegradable, compostable, post-consumer recycled content, X% less materials — while the jargon may be clear for those within the packaging industry, are consumers understanding everything? For instance, does an average consumer know that their PLA needs to be separated from their PET? As more environmentally-friendly innovations develop, consumers need to be made better aware of what these terms mean and how manufacturers can make certain that consumers are contributing to a more sustainable environment.
Glass was nowhere to be found. As mentioned in last month's column, glass packaging is declining in the US (though it is making inroads in some international markets). Given that exhibitors were from the US and Canada, flexible packaging, such as stand-up pouches, reflected the growing overall interest and general movement from glass. Our projected CAGRs from 2007 to 2012 of stand-up pouches for packaged foods in the US, Canada, and the global market are 5.9%, 2.6% and 7.6%, respectively.
Design and labelling continue to be a key differentiator in the highly competitive consumer packaged goods industry. With the plethora of choices on store shelves and the time-pressed nature of many consumers, package design and labelling are significant in capturing their attention. Technological developments in CAD and digital printing have helped to make packages more captivating to the consumer eye.
While this by no means serves as an exhaustive list, these are a few trends worth noting as the end of the first half of 2008 approaches.

By Phil Park, Euromonitor International
For PACKAGING WORLD (USA)