Report from the Packbridge AGM

Per-Stefan Gersbro, CEO Packbridge

The room was packed at Media Evolution Center when Packbridge held its AGM on 23 April. In addition to the usual review of the previous year and a number of presentations, the participants were also the first to hear a surprising announcement.

Packbridge can look back at yet another successful year with a number of activities and participation in a variety of projects. This became clear when the CEO, Per-Stefan Gersbro, presented his review of the year. We have been involved in a variety of activities at 12 different places, principally concentrated on Skåne, but we have also been in Karlstad, Örebro, Stockholm and Sundsvall. Among these projects, OpenUp is the biggest, and a project that will continue. We have also worked on gender equality in a project run by Näringsliv Skåne.

Ongoing projects include “Grow International Southern Sweden” which is run by Invest in Skåne and is aimed at helping small and medium-sized companies enter the international market. “Skåne Smart Specialisation” is a project with the ambition of developing a five-year statement of intent that makes it possible to seek larger development projects with other clusters. It deals with intelligent materials, personal health and intelligent, sustainable cities. Together with the German food cluster foodRegio, we are part of a forthcoming project involving 12 organisations in 8 countries and which now includes the majority of the Baltic region. The project is about the sustainable production of food and Packbridge is expected to represent packaging competence in this project.

Johan Mårtensson, Packbridge

The packaging field is one of the areas named by the European Commission as a strongly developing market in which a great deal is expected to happen. AdPack is a project aimed at exploiting other competences – in other words clusters within other fields – which can be of benefit to packaging development, such as nano and plasma technology and plastics. Five partners in five countries are involved, and Packbridge is the coordinator. The biggest project, but also the most difficult to understand, is foodbest, the biggest ever investment in food research. This is a KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community), which has been in the pipeline for a long time but which is now close to realisation. The theme is Food4Future and economically it represents 150 million euros per year for 10 years. It will be operational in 2017. Packbridge is involved in this application too. There is a great deal that indicates that the base for this KIC will be close to our region.

For a while, Packbridge had an office in Lund, but for a variety of reasons we left this a year ago and since then the organisation has been officeless. However, we will now be moving into new premises in Media Evolution Center during the summer. We will then be sharing space with other clusters; something that we are looking forward to.

Top Packaging Summit by Packbridge this year won’t be taking place, simply because it would have clashed with Scanpack 2015. However, it will be back in October next year, and will be held at Malmö Live which is just being completed.

Per Nyström, Chairman of the board, Packbridge

Before Per-Stefan Gersbro’s review, Packbridge’s chairman of the board Per Nyström had spoken about the board’s view of developments and also announced a cliffhanger. He made the surprise announcement that Per-Stefan had decided to leave his post as CEO on 1 October this year, and that the board had appointed a replacement. The identity of the replacement was the cliffhanger. After Per-Stefan’s presentation it was time to reveal who the new CEO would be, and this was someone chosen by internal recruitment. Johan Mårtensson, who has successfully worked with OpenUp for us, will take over the position.

Three different presentations were on the programme for the AGM. The first speaker was Bodil Rosvall Jönsson, Head of Business Development and MD of Business Region Skåne. She spoke about Skåne as an innovative region with an explicit ambition to become the most innovative. This need not merely relate to Skåne; if we take the Öresund region and Denmark too, this includes 3.7 million people, and in a few years when the fixed link over (or rather under) the Fehmarn Belt is complete and we have Hamburg within three hours’ drive, it will include 12 million people, and this is an important figure from an international perspective.

Bodil Rosvall Jönsson, Head of Business Development and MD of Business Region Skåne

Naturally Bodil also talked about ESS and Max IV which is being built just outside Lund and which will give a significant boost to innovation in our area. This is positive for the packaging industry, not least regarding packaging and barrier materials. Both facilities will not merely be used for research, however; it is important that the environment around them, with new companies, housing and educational facilities, functions and grows. One issue in the region’s success is how we can get young people to stay and how we can get others to move here, for example to study.

“This is actually quite a fun place to live. There’s a special feeling here that appeals to many people, with a great deal to attract them in addition to industry and research, and that applies to the region as a whole”, said Bodil Rosvall Jönsson.

Jan Boberg from Ystad-based Scanfill is often present at Packbridge events and he is extremely satisfied with the help the company – which produces mineral-filled plastics – has received from Packbridge. He shared this in his presentation at the AGM.

Jan Boberg, Scanfill

“Scanfill has very warm feelings about Packbridge. We have received a great deal of benefit from you”, he said, adding that they are counting on very strong development in the next few years. The company currently produces 5000 tonnes of material per year. In five years they expect to be as big as their parent company, Polykemi, which manufactures more than 45,000 tonnes of compounded plastic material every year.

Packbridge has not least been of benefit to Scanfill when it comes to finding new business in Asia.

The AGM ended with the future CEO, Johan Mårtensson, giving a description of how the expression open innovation has developed during the two years that he has been working with OpenUp. “We are already living in an open innovation landscape”, he asserted.

Robin Thiberg, Innosensia and Seedfundit

OpenUp has developed positively and today has 800 users in 20 countries. 30 challenges have been announced and at the time of the AGM there were 200 ideas on the platform. Johan concluded by inviting onto the stage Robin Thiberg from Innosensia and Seedfundit, one of the winners in a challenge that was announced on OpenUp last year. He explained that Packbridge and the network was an important part of reinforcing their self-confidence and which encouraged them to take the step to create a company to move their innovation further.

“Through both Packbridge and OpenUp we have found strategic collaboration partners and met the right people. That has given us a great deal”, said Robin Thiberg.