A commitment to ecology
It is not possible to understand what 2019 has meant for the packaging industry without mentioning a term: sustainability.
Due to both internal and external factors, the sector has had to put its batteries into this course at a time when all heavy-duty operators have chosen to advertise and, in most cases, start developing ambitious plans where both packaging and packaging were at the heart of the strategy. While the E+E world has long been prepared to respond to this need, the urgency of reinventing many of its customers has been truly overwhelming. With plastic at the gravitational center of all these changes, the measures addressed by high consumption force differentiated patterns, but in general clearly that they affect all materials and that they will have to be implemented in a short period of time. Innovation in packaging is part of their DNA practically from the beginning. The search for new materials, formats and improvements has been the constant one that has allowed the packaged products to have cornered over time other forms of sale.
But within this norm, the reality is that the industry has always had its own times both for the development of a novelty and for its mass marketing. As a “recent” example, the case of a material as popular today as PET, formulated in the early 1940s that, however, did not reach the shelves until the late 70s achieving real fame in the 90s. This patient scheme has been broken in the present times due to a series of social, economic and productive changes that are going to force the packaging industry to transform itself in a totally radical way in the comparatively short span of ten years.
This is the window that both its clients and international institutions have defined to give a complete turn to this industry. From the European Union, which in pursuit of the production model of the Circular Economy seeks that by 2030 all packaging is recyclable or reusable; to the UN, which through the Sustainable Development Goals, to be implemented also in that year, promotes changes that implicitly affect this world as well. In the case of heavy-duty operators, times are narrower.
Although 2030 is the final goal of the plans presented by the main actors of this world, there are in most cases more immediate objectives that should be visible between 2021 (the year in which the first phase of the new European Single-Use Plastic Directive 2019/904) and 2025 will enter into force, and which mostly deal with a total change in the portfolio of packaging used by these companies in favour of recyclable materials, compostable or biodegradable.
We cannot understand the future in this sector without prioritizing this term, which will mark the industrial and economic future
The search for new materials, formats and improvements have been the constant in our company
The company has always had its own time, both for R&D and for an optimal marketing plan