Stimulating atmosphere at the 2016 Packbridge Research Forum

On 18 May, we held the Packbridge Research Forum at the Quality View Hotel in Malmö, and around 100 people came together to hear about current packaging research under way at universities and institutions in both Scandinavia and the UK. It was an extremely rewarding day with an excellent atmosphere and a great deal of networking.

The speakers covered a wide spectrum with their presentations, from advanced chemistry and nanocellulose to commercial trends. Agne Swerin from SP demonstrated the opportunities presented by nanocellulose in the packaging industry; incredibly this material is stronger than steel! From the UK, Sukky Jassi and Anderson Lima, who both work at The Retail Institute, pointed to urban trends in commerce and how they are affecting packaging. Sukky Jassi observed that our emotions play an extremely large role in our purchasing decisions. We are most affected by scents – up to 75% of all purchasing decisions are made by scent! The major brands have realised this and are investing increasing sums on this aspect both within food and other retail sectors.

The presentation of Jane Bickerstaffe from IncPen in the UK included a survey carried out of 362 households who were asked to send in their empty food packages for an assessment to be made of how much remained in them. It turned out that a full 236 items of packaging contained less than 1% of residues and only 7 items had more than 15%.

Hjalmar Granberg from Innventia gave an exciting overview of demonstrators based on biomaterials. We learned that the packaging of the future will be collapsible or both opaque and transparent in a single material.

Fredrik Fernqvist and Faiza Rasheed from SLU looked at the consumers’ perception of packaging materials, particularly as regards the packaging of vegetables, and described a survey carried out in which only 3% of the 500 people asked thought that packaging for tomatoes was important, and only 0.35% of 373 people wanted packaged apples. The industry definitely has work to do to disseminate this kind of information regarding the use of packaging. Faiza also described how research is under way to determine how wheat can be used to produce starch-based packaging material. SLU and biomaterials are a natural combination.

There is a great deal of interesting packaging research under way and the industry has a great deal to gain by keeping itself up-to-date – which is of course the intention with the Packbridge Research Forum.

During the day a much-appreciated workshop was also held, led by Malin Olander Röse, with the theme “Driving innovation within packaging”. Here we looked at how to reinforce collaboration between academia and industry and thus how to drive innovation within packaging.

The Packbridge Research Forum has become an essential gathering point for everyone who appreciates the importance of keeping abreast with packaging research, and of course it will be back again next year!