This supplement is an independent publication from Raconteur MediaMarch5 2009
PACKAGING INNOVATIONS
Packaging needs
shelf-confidence
Strategic innovator Steve Kelsey says it’s high time themuch maligned packaging industry is given its dues.Time machines are very nifty devices, Iam sure you will agree. Certainly, ajaunt through the calendar from lastyear to this would have been most wel-come to anyone who placed a heavybet in a casino, or ‘bank’ as we callthem these days. In a similar vein, if you had offeredme the keys to a time machine a decadeago and told me that one of the hot top-ics for consumers, retailers, the mediaand a herd of quangos would be pack-aging –well, I’d have been shocked.For decades, the packaging industryhas quietly toiled away like the health-iest of beavers, consistently increasingefficiency, reducing cost, extendingfunctionality, increasing differentia-tion and delivering brand new mar-kets to new brand owners. All thisachieved for the price of a few fish, atleast that is what it felt like if you everworked in the industry. Now, sudden-ly, everyone is hunting beaver. This unhappy fate is caused by a scaleof short-sightedness not witnessedsince Gordon Brown assured us all thatthe UK economy was in no danger ofrecession. Packaging is perceived purelyin terms of waste. It is not waste. Pack-aging is the forgotten infrastructure thatsupports our society, as important aspower, transportation, sanitation andhealth care to our modern lifestyle. Last year marked the year whenmore than 50 per cent of the globalpopulation lived in cities. The UN hasestimated that by 2030 the world´spopulation will have swelled by anoth-er 2.3 billion and 87 per cent of thatgrowth will be urban. Without mod-ern forms of packaging, supporting anurban population of this scale wouldbe impossible. We know this to be truefrom the past.Rome, with a population of aroundone million was the largest city in theancient world, and to feed the popu-lace it needed the world’s largest mer-chant navy at that time. Despite thishuge logistical effort, food riots werecommon. INDUSTRIALISATIONLondon became the first city to breakthis million-citizen barrier during thereign of Queen Victoria –expandingby six million homes. This vast newpopulation was only sustainable dueto the industrialisation of food pro-duction and distribution. And it is not just cities. Withoutpackaging many markets would notexist. It is difficult to see how Coca-Cola could have achieved its globaldominance without bottles. It is not bychance that one of the brand´s mosttreasured icons is the contour bottle.Heinz and Campbell’s soup built theirempires on cans; Birds Eye on frozenfood cartons. Today there isn’t a retail-er on the planet who could operatewithout packaging. But the relationship between pack-aging and our society is more funda-mental than this. Our economydepends on an ability to reach marketsof millions in order to prompt theKennedy’s crusadeEnvironment Minister Jane Kennedy ispleased with the packaging industry –but sayswe have a responsibility to do more page 3investment and deliver the incomethat supports our standard of living.Packaging delivers this ability.This fact of economic life applies tothe vast majority of mass-marketgoods, even such vital products as med-icine. Without the income streams thata mass market guarantees, the costlyR&D that the pharmaceutical industryundertakes would not be possible. Remove the ability to distribute adrug widely and you destroy theincome that guarantees the availabilityof cheap high quality pharmaceuticals. This has obvious implications forhealth and welfare but also has a hugeimpact on choice. Today we take forgranted the ability of the majori-ty of women to plan their fami-lies and careers, but this ability isentirely dependent on the avail-ability of affordable high qualitycontraception.The packaging industry is well awareREDUCING WASTESustainability has rightly come to domi-nate our thinking. Short-sightedness hadled packaging to be wrongly associatedwith waste and excess. This is particularlyironic when you consider the role it hasalways played in reducing waste, in pro-tecting the hard won added-valueembedded in products and in guarantee-ing markets operate efficiently. Sustainability and innovationThe key to sustainability in the packagingindustry is innovation. We discover threecompanies which are doing it rightpage 4that work needs to be done, and it ismaking progress. However, it is time toput in context what it already delivers. It delivers modern cities, marketsand the real economy. It delivers healthand nutrition at affordable prices. Itoffers us choice at the most fundamen-tal level. It will continue to do all this inincreasingly sustainable ways. Theseare things worth remembering.The war on wasteA recent LGA report demands more must bedone to reduce waste; the industry says pack-aging is a scapegoat for rising taxes page 12Images supplied by www.museumofbrands.com