Trends in food packaging

The food industry is well aware that consumers want innovation and value novelty, and therefore the packaging industry must innovate or stagnate. One of the major trends is material substitution, from glass to polyethylene terepthalate (PET) bottles. Its light weight and convenience are likely to prove popular with consumers. Lightweighting is also a new trend in packaging. Direct printing onto the bottle means that no label is required and a special neck finish enables a tearoff ring-pull closure to be attached. Now a variety of bar code symbologies that can be read by smartphones are appearing on packs. The QR (quick response) is the most common, it can launch exclusive content, update Facebook status, download coupons, promotions and music and invite friends to join. Sustainable packaging has been substituted with a more balanced view of efficient packaging, minimum resources, minimizing product waste, transport and display efficiency and effective after-use disposal and recycling. A very exciting development undertaken by Avantium in The Netherlands has resulted in a new polyester, polyethylene furanoate (PEF), an analogue of PET. Founded in 2012 from research at MIT, LiquiGlide coatings allow viscous liquids to move easily due to permanently wet slippery surfaces. Serac's Roll N Blow uses an innovative tubular thermoforming technology to produce cups or bottles from plastic reels of polystyrene or polypropylene