With the recent, brutal price fluctuations in the paper and plastic manufacturing industries, it’s not surprising that costs are one of the main preoccupations in the industry today. One of the questions from the survey aimed at establishing trends and key factors in the packaging industry, both today and 10 years from now. As you will see, the respondents’ answers paint a very interesting yet surprising picture.
The third in a series of four blog posts: Last August, Packaging World, in association with the company DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers, conducted a survey involving professionals from the packaging industry and other related sectors in order to learn about the current trends as well as those that could dominate the industry ten years from now. This blog series will highlight the key points of those results.
Even if the study was conducted on two different continents, the results were analysed and presented separately, thus facilitating the analysis of results from North America, IMS’s market.
Sustainability and costs, side by side
These two trends will be the most important ones in 2022, but will also suffer the greatest fluctuations, one increasing, one decreasing. On one hand, the costs of packaging components, which is in first place today with 61%, will move to second place in 2022 with 41%, a drop in 20 percentage points. Sustainability, on the other hand, identified as the current trend by only 32% of respondents, will leap by 16 percentage points to 48% in 2022, moving to first place.
Moreover, the current trend of choosing materials that meet performance needs should, according to respondents, drop dramatically from second to sixth place of the seven trends and key factors discussed in the survey.
Yet again, sustainable development and green solutions are part of a long-term vision of companies in the industry. In the final analysis of the survey results, addressing packaging strategies, you’ll see that the environmental trend will again move to the top of the list of two strategies to pursue 10 years from now. I find it interesting to see that companies are more conscious of the fate of the planet and its inhabitants. Don’t you?
