Packbridge CEO Johan Mårtensson was at a parliamentary seminar on 10 February where the topic was the national food strategy and the FoodKIC! The aim was to highlight the importance of stronger collaboration between the packaging and food industries.

At the meeting were also Lund University, Region Skåne, the Skåne Food Innovation Network and Livsmedelsföreningen, amongst others. The government’s participants included Rural Affairs Minister Sven-Erik Bucht, who stated that this venture has clear support from the government.

Packbridge is part of the Nordic branch of FoodNexus, which is one of five European centres in the consortium that will apply to the EU organisation EIT for more than 100 million euros over 7 years to fund a future innovation alliance .

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), based in Budapest, is an EU body which works to improve collaboration in the knowledge triangle of education, research and innovation. The aim is to create a more competitive Europe through both increased innovation and increased entrepreneurship. Investments are made through KICs (Knowledge and Innovation Communities). Each KIC promotes collaboration between companies, universities and research institutes.

Sweden is at the forefront when it comes to packaging, both in terms of research and development, and in terms of production and exports. To provide a perspective, one can compare the use of consumer packaging, which is estimated at 1.3% of total European consumption, with production of the same, which is approximately 4.5%. Production is more than three times as high as use. To give another view, this can be related to Sweden’s share of the total EU GDP, which is 2.5%. The packaging production share of this is twice as large as the share of GDP, indicating a very strong position.

For further information, please contact Johan Mårtensson via johan@packbridge.se or on +46 (0) 766 456 535.

In just a few years, Packbridge Research Forum has become something of an institution when it comes to packaging-related research. Over the course of a day a variety of researchers get the opportunity to present their latest findings. Last year close to 150 people, most of them from the industry, were on site to hear the latest research results. Packbridge Research Forum has quite simply become a real bridge between academia, research and industry.

This year’s date is 18 May, and the venue is the new Quality Hotel View in Malmö. The programme is now beginning to take shape and, for the first time, a speaker from a country outside the Nordic countries will be on the rostrum. Jane Bickerstaffe, from Incpen in the UK, will be addressing the ever present problem of hard-to-empty packaging, with the theme “The Bit in the Bottom”. Incpen has just launched a guide for packaging manufacturers, brand owners and designers which gives good advice on this issue. They have tested 362 different items of packaging in different sectors, and have produced interesting statistics such as that in 236 of the packs around 1% of the contents remained when it was perceived as empty.

Also on the list of speakers will be Peter Sandberg from SP, who will speak about “Innovation around the user experience“, Alexander Bardenstein from the Danish DTI, whose presentation is entitled “Sustainable Materials for food packaging applicatons“, and Faiza Rasheed and Fredrik Fernqvist from SLU, Jouni Lattu from VTT Finland, Hjalmar Granberg from Innventia and Björn Norberg from Acreo. Additional speakers have confirmed their participation and more details will shortly be available on the website http://www.packbridgeresearchforum.com.

For more information, contact Felix Helander via felix@packbridge.se or on +46 (0) 734 087 590.

It is extremely important for all businesses to keep an eye on current trends to try to understand what will happen next ‒ and even sometimes to look further ahead into the future. For everyone in the packaging value chain, there are many factors to take into consideration. Over 80 people attended  Packbridge event on trends affecting the packaging industry.

Below is a video summary of the event.
As a member of Packbridge you can see the whole event, log in here.

A summary of Packbridge Event – 9/2 2016 from Packbridge on Vimeo.

Den svenska förpackningsindustrin omsatte förra året 75 miljarder SEK och hade över 21 000 anställda. Det är siffror som pekar på en stabil bransch med en måttlig tillväxt, främst driven av de riktigt stora företagen. Det här framkommer i inledningen till Packbridge årliga rapport ”The Swedish Packaging Industry – An Overview” som Felix Helander producerat för fjärde året i rad. Rapporten omfattar 16 sidor och är rikt illustrerad med diagram som visar på utvecklingen. Den distribueras gratis till alla Packbridge medlemmar och beställs genom olof@packbridge.se.

Är du inte medlem kostar den 4000 kronor och kan beställas på http://packbridge.tictail.com.