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Four trends to shape future of food and beverage packaging

At Anuga FoodTec, Tetra Pak identifies four major expectations by brand owners and consumers for food and beverage packaging technology that will drive future innovation.

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Tetra Pak offered a comprehensive view on the economic, social, and environmental forces impacting food-packaging development during a trade-show press event and impressively large and technologically advanced 16,000-sq-ft booth at Anuga FoodTec 2012, held in Cologne, Germany, in late March.

The company’s theme for the event, “Today, Tomorrow, Together,” highlighted its focus on packaging solutions for today—especially in the realm of liquid cartons for food and beverages—and innovation for the future that meets key consumer trends.

At its press event, attended by more than 100 journalists from around the world, Tetra Pak president and CEO Dennis Jönsson, said, “We have seen the world changing around us. Demographics, economics, and sustainability are driving changes.”

Among the demographic changes he cited were the growth of aging populations in developed markets, new and expanding middle-class populations in developing countries, and the expansion of the world’s population overall. “There are tremendous opportunities for growth primarily due to population growth,” said Jönsson. “We will have two billion more customers by 2020.”

Speaking to economics, Jönsson noted that Tetra Pak had not attended the last edition of Anuga, in 2009. Due to the poor economic environment, “many of our customers did not attend, so we did not either,” he said. This year’s show saw Tetra Pak coming off a year of 5% growth, resulting in €10.3 billion in revenue and “growth in all geographies,” including South and Southeast Asia, Central and South America, China, and Sub-Sahara Africa.

As for sustainability, “we need to do more with less,” he said. “New realities are shifting all the time.”

Setting the stage for the event, Jönsson closed his presentation by enumerating the four trends identified by Tetra Pak that will drive the future of packaging. These include rising expectations by both brand owners and consumers in the areas of:

• Package functionality and differentiation
• Overall packaging performance and reliability in relation to cost
• Food safety
• Sustainability

Package functionality, differentiation
During a press tour of the Tetra Pak booth, Francesco Faella, product director at Tetra Pak, introduced some of the company’s newest package designs, created to meet the desire by brand owners and customers for packaging with greater functionality and differentiation. “The customer [brand owner] wants the consumer to choose their product,” he said. “The selection process at the shelf is so short. A package must be able to quickly communicate quality and functionality.”

One of the functional expectations of late has been for convenient, on-the-go packaging, noted a complementary Tetra Pak press release. “One of the biggest challenges to the food industry in recent years has been the growth of on-the-go consumption,” says the release, “with busy consumers demanding a ‘right here, right now’ service from their shopping experience. Consumers are increasingly looking for a stress-free option.”

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