Evolving is challenging, but fun!

For 2017, we have made major changes in how we offer our members value for their membership. We have created Packbridge Partner Events that enable our members to co-organise half-day events to emphasise their area of the packaging value chain. In this way our members can more actively use the network to develop their organisations with educational and networking activities.

New for this year are two initiatives to increase the exposure of our members and the packaging industry to important actors. The first is Packbridge Startup Challenge, a competition aimed at startup companies that have interesting products or services which are useful in the packaging value chain. The aim is for all incubators to be aware of the packaging industry and its needs. Unfortunately we are conspicuous by our absence from this stage and as a result miss out on new solutions and expertise.

The second initiative is fempack, which is a network for professional women in the packaging value chain. There is a lot of interest in this platform from our members, but we also have a problem finding female speakers for our events so this should be a win-win situation for Packbridge internally. However, there is also an external aspect that we want to emphasise, and this is to show recent graduates and professional women outside the packaging industry that the industry exists and is an interesting one to work in for women too.

Obviously we still have Top Packaging Summit and Packbridge Research Forum, both of which have been improved so they are now even better and fit new needs and challenges as they arise.

Packbridge is a small team that works hard to create as much value as possible for our members. We challenge ourselves in terms of developing our services, how we arrange our events and how we can reach all of our members in the entire packaging value chain. Of course there is a risk that our efforts won’t work out quite how we planned, but even then we learn something new to take forward with us to the next idea.

We are very happy that our members come to us for inspiration and to use the network for their own development. It isn’t always easy, but together it’s easier and much more fun.

/ Team Packbridge