Plastics on the rise

In its various forms, plastics form a large proportion of the packaging materials we rely on every day. Packaging Today sorts through the latest data to offer insight into the performance of the market and what it means for brands and retailers, with industry insight from Satvinder Dhillon at Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Aaron Bennett at Kraft Heinz, Klaus Hartwig at Nestlé Waters and Chet Rutledge at Walmart.

Plastic packaging falls into two main categories: rigid plastics, which are largely used for containers and bottles in the beverage and personal care markets, and flexible plastics, which appear most often as labels, films and pouches throughout consumer goods markets.

According to the latest research from Canadean, rigid plastics will account for 923 billion packaging units in 2016, while flexible plastics will account for approximately 645 billion. These numbers are staggering, but alone, they aren't necessarily useful for trying to understand the performance or direction of the market.

Simply speaking, plastic, in its various guises, is forecast to account for approximately 35% of the global packaging market in 2016, most visibly in bottles for the beverage, beauty and home care markets, and in films used in pouches and food. With such a large market share, plastic is a dominant force in the support of the key trends and innovations driving the market.

The versatile choice

Plastic is a fundamental material on which the modern packaging market relies. It forms the linings and closures of most caps and overcaps; it labels our products; and as film, it keeps our food fresh.

Although it has previously suffered a bad reputation for being unrecyclable or bad for the environment, strides are being made to reduce the weight of the material. The content of the plastics used in packaging is also slowly moving from finite oil to alternative or renewable resources. As such, plastics have performed a strategic pivot to see their continued use in multiple applications while addressing the hesitations that consumers or brand developers might have.

Historically, convenience formed a small consideration of packaging formats that had limited interaction with shoppers. It was largely concerned with the ease with which a product could be used: good examples included sports water bottles with their pull-out and locking caps, microwave pouches with punch holes, and Tupperware.

With the move away from a mass market to a more individual and customised packaging approach, however, consumers increasingly define convenience as what makes the product easy to open, close, reuse and dispose of in any given situation, without loss of function or quality. There are infinite possibilities for how a product can be used, and its packaging has to be convenient for all of them. Companies are therefore always looking out for the latest ways to make packaging easier for consumers to interact with.

Consumer research

"Consumer research will always turn up a new method or direction that we would not have thought of in isolation," explains Satvinder Dhillon, head of packaging development at Lucozade Ribena Suntory. "For example, there are customers who will leave a bottle floating in the water while swimming laps in the pool, or those who need to be able to open it one-handed while driving. Convenience has a different meaning for everyone, but it does often share common ground: in these cases, the bottle should be easy to open and close one-handed, spill-proof, and easy to hold on the move."

These kinds of insight lead to developments such as the ubiquitous sports closure of the Lucozade brand, and plastic is key to enabling such innovations: metal is too expensive, glass is too heavy and cumbersome, and paper does not hold shape well enough.

Consumer research allows companies to essentially follow consumers into their homes and see them use a product in everyday situations, and this has led to a raft of innovations in plastic. Perhaps the most famous was when Heinz moved its ketchup from glass bottles into upside-down plastic bottles. Heinz noticed that consumers were turning the glass bottle upside down, almost instinctively, to make sure the full contents came out, and it used this to drive a more secure product that could stand up independently and minimize product waste. Consumers reacted positively and sales accelerated.

"Turning the bottle upside down was a real lightbulb moment," notes Aaron Bennett, director of research and development, breakthrough innovation, at Kraft Heinz. "And, with the growing ability to lightweight plastic, we can turn a functional innovation into one that is good the environment too. Consumers can open and use the product conveniently, and dispose of it sustainably."

The all-rounder
Klaus Hartwig, head of research and development and the Product Technology Center for Nestlé Waters, is very clear about the benefits and applications of plastic as a material.

"There are many reasons to use PET to package water," he says. "It is a safe, efficient, light, transparent and recyclable material, and it allows us to protect the purity and taste of water efficiently. As packaging is one of the 'ambassadors' of a brand, PET represents - in terms of size, shape, convenience and aesthetics - what that brand stands for, which means it offers credibility and respect to a company. Last but not least, PET is fully recyclable, and recycling streams today are well established in many countries. In fact, global demand for recycled PET material largely exceeds collection volumes."

Sustainability
No matter how it is defined or what it covers, sustainability is a key driver of plastic's presence and growth in the packaging market. Lightweighting has seen numerous wins for brand-owners and retailers, which have managed to remove as much as 40% of the weight of their raw material, and even more in terms of cost of manufacture and transport.

The advances in plastic recycling and reuse are also staggering: while the EU claimed about 20% recycling rates for plastic just five to ten years ago, the figure is fast approaching 45% today, and will hopefully be up alongside other materials before the end of the decade - perhaps even surpassing them further down the road.

"Plastic is certainly considered to be one of the most versatile of the tools in the packaging portfolio," says Chet Rutledge, director of packaging private brands at Walmart, "and it certainly forms a core part of our sustainability drive. We take a systems approach to primary, secondary and tertiary packaging, all of which is needed to ensure the smooth transition of the product from manufacture to the shelf and into a customer's home.

"It's all about using the right material for the right purpose, engineered to the highest specifications, so it can perform to the highest standards of packaging possible. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to packaging, it would be a lot harder to achieve our packaging goals and targets without plastics."