SBWire

The worsening situation in the Spanish economy, rising unemployment levels and the falling levels of consumer confidence had a negative effect on sales of alcoholic drinks over 2012. The foodservice channel continued to be most affected by the worsening economy - consumers have increasingly preferred consumption at home to save on costs, thereby benefitting sales in the retail channel, having a direct impact on alcoholic beverage packaging over the year.

One of the worst consequences of the deep economic crisis Spain has undergone over the last two years of the review period, and which finalised in Q3 2013, is the unsustainable unemployment rate which was at 26% by October 2013 according to national sources. This fact is resulting in a polarisation of Spanish society: On one hand, there are those Spaniards who still have a job that are benefiting from lower prices and opting to buy extra value products, especially gourmet and premium lines,...

The worsening economic situation in Spain continued affecting consumption in the foodservice channel to the benefit of the retail channel as consumers were required to reduce costs. This shift in consumption evolved into demand switching from traditional glass bottles to convenient and low-cost packaging preferred in retail consumption, most significantly PET bottles in medium/large sizes and metal beverage cans in high-value multipacks. Metal beverage cans in cola carbonates was the pack type to benefit most from this trend, with brand owners aiming at attracting consumer attention by offering price promotions of their products in multipacks in hypermarkets and supermarkets. Brand owners preferred offering promotions on multipacks rather than decreasing the price per unit in an attempt to not jeopardise their brand advantage over fast-growing private label products in the market.

Energy saving and environmental protection were key themes in 2011/2012, reflected in the increasingly popular refill pack in home care packaging. Home laundry, dishwashing and liquid electronic insecticides manufacturers have launched refill pack for their products, which are not only cheap in pricing, but also eco-friendly. Such refill packs are most commonly seen in plastic and aluminium/plastic pouches.

The sluggish economy in France hampered the level of consumer purchasing power. French consumers paid more attention to their spending and showed higher price sensitivity by cutting down on non-essentials. Since 2010, Henkel has marketed its liquid detergents by adjusting their product and prices in order to come into alignment with the lower consumer purchasing power. As a result, the positioning of its X-Tra range as a low-cost liquid detergent enabled PET bottles to grow in France, which created an opportunity for plastic screw closures to perform well.

In hot drinks packaging in Switzerland a major trend is towards convenient single-portion packaging, despite being high-margin products. This trend can not only be seen with the premium brand Nescafe, but also the leading Swiss discounter Aldi Suisse has introduced a capsule coffee machine "Aurora" with coffee pods called "Martello". In addition, the two largest Swiss grocery chains Migros and Coop also offer their own range of coffee pods under their private label names. However, the single-portion pods are not only popular within coffee, the brand Delizio (available in Migros) sells peppermint or rooibos tea in single portions. Another example of a very successful single-portion system with capsule machine is Kraft Food's "Tassimo", which sells coffee, tea and cacao hot drinks in pods. Such single-portion pods are mostly made of metal and in Switzerland they can be separately recycled in specially designed containers.

2013 was a flat year for the packaging industry in France. The impact of the fragile economic climate led consumers to favour staying home and purchasing food through the retail channel at the expense of foodservice to save money. Additionally, consumers become more cost-savvy in terms of spending, showing higher price sensitivity and consciousness. Consumers tend to spend less but better, resulting in a change in purchasing patterns. This has therefore had an impact on volume sales of the...

Beauty and personal care packaging continues to show solid unit volume growth. Whilst some high value products have suffered as economic stagnation continues, strong unit volume growth in deodorants and bath and shower has continued. Color cosmetics, which includes nail products, grew significantly in 2012, by 2% and 4%, respectively, as the trend of affordable luxury continues during recessionary times. Buying a wide variety of make-up products and nail varnishes from high-end brands such as MAC, Nars, OPI or Essie, is a relatively inexpensive way for consumers to spoil themselves. These are the major categories within beauty and personal care which have performed well in volume terms.

In light of growing demand for and pressure to produce environmentally-friendly packaging, brand owners turned more towards the use of flexible packaging during the review period. Therefore the use of flexible packaging as primary packaging saw significant growth within hot drinks packaging.

Allflex, a company that provides plastic injection molding production, is pleased to announce they have expanded their services to include metal injection molding production. Acting as a variation of plastic injection molding, metal injection molding (MIM) enables the fabrication of metal parts utilizing traditional injection molding technology. MIM is best suited for high-volume production of small metal parts.

JBConline.co.uk now offers top-notch quality glass storage jars at the most reasonable prices. The company has successfully set standards in their industry by being a renowned global packaging company. Their experienced and supportive team provide jars of all sizes, such as 0-200ml, 2-300ml, 300ml +, and kiln Clip jars. In order to compliment the product’s high quality, glass packaging is additional.

Soft drinks enjoy immense popularity as they agree with the lifestyles of the German population, which is greatly influenced by heightened health consciousness. In particular, bottled water profits from this development as it is considered a health-enhancing beverage. The German mineral water industry offers a variety of brands, packaging types and sizes in order to tap into prevailing consumer trends. Brands need to justify their presence in order to maintain their leading positions and not to be ousted by private label items. Equally important are the aesthetics, functionality and ecological factors of packaging.

Increasing consumption of fresh coffee ground pods boosted the demand for other metal. According to trade press, the demand for machines that use coffee capsules was expected to increase by 117% in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011 and represented 20% of total sales of coffee machines. This implies strong growth in the consumption of pods in Argentina, where the brand Nespresso stands out.

PET continues to dominate soft drinks packaging and it even increased its share in 2012, growing in both the retail and foodservice channels as the trend towards lightweighting and recycling continued to be a focus for consumers, manufacturers and retailers alike. Among the main advantages of using PET are its greater cost-effectiveness for manufacturers and that is 100% recyclable. According to industry experts, the plastics market on the whole is aiming to use and consume less - utilising more sustainable methodologies and practices will dominate the market moving forward. As plastic has been on the rise in soft drinks, the demand for paper, glass and metal packaging suffered slightly and is likely to remain at more static levels, although all three materials are expected to retain a significant presence in the UK drinks industry.

Transparency of the product is a selling point asset for brand owners within soft drinks in France. This trend therefore enabled PET bottles to gain ground within 100% juices in 2012, thanks to the success of Tropicana in PET bottles in the size of 850ml in November 2010. According to trade press, PepsiCo France SNC was able to recruit 170,000 new purchaser households in 2011. Such a performance led the company to upsize PET bottles for the Tropicana Pure Premium range by launching in December 2011 the size of 1,300ml within 100% juices in retail, hence the positive growth in 2012.

Dog and cat food continued to be in the nascent stage in 2012. Such products are bought by only rich consumers in upmarket parts of metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Since such products have limited demand in an Indian context, their packaging was therefore dominated by a few pack types and sizes. For example, flexible packaging accounted for 73% of total packaging units in 2012. Flexible packaging is light in weight and protects dog and cat food from moisture, which means it has widespread application.

Soft drinks continue to be the highly dominant contributor for beverage packaging in Indonesia as growing convenience pushes people to enjoy drinks in a ready-to-drink format and growing health awareness raises demand for functional drinks. Being in a hot tropical climate, enjoying cool soft drinks has become one of the necessities to quenching thirst among Indonesians. The strong growth of convenience stores, which are equipped with spacious refrigerators to store various types of chilled soft drinks, therefore spurred growth of soft drinks during the review period. The usage of ice cubes by traditional beverage kiosks has been diminishing and replaced by refrigerators supplied by manufacturers or purchased independently by the store operator. For this same reason, one-way packaging or non-returnable packaging continues to be the more preferred packaging type for soft drinks, with price difference not such a major consideration for consumers.

Hot drinks continued to benefit from the growing disposable income and changing lifestyles of in particular urban consumers in Indonesia. Convenience, stamina boosts and maintaining health through nutritional intake increasingly became the primary drivers for hot drinks in the review period. Hot drinks packaging thus continued to flourish, especially as hot drinks require air-tight packaging to maintain freshness, aroma and taste. Moreover, with the growing sachet packs for single serving, unit volume is rising despite being partially offset by the growth in large pack sizes for better value. Overall hot drinks packaging expanded by 6% volume units in 2012 to reach 5.4 billion units.

The worsening financial situation of households affected producers in terms of lower sales. As a consequence, there was less activity in terms of the introduction of packaging novelties. Significant projects aimed at changing packaging were suspended and new concepts were not developed. Companies tended to implement new products without spending on investment in new packaging; thus bath and shower, men's toiletries or hair care were basically characterised by the offering of standard rigid plastic bottles provided with simple closures. This type of packaging and closure are less costly, which translates into money saving in production processes. Market potential for cheap and simply shaped closures is dynamically driving rising demand for private label products. As packaging has an essential share in the final price, discounters, supermarkets and hypermarkets are focused on the lowest costs. In 2012, the cheapest closures - plastic screw closures and plastic dispensing closures - showed the fastest growth in actual terms.

Various Chinese elements, Chinese ink-wash painting on the packaging for example, are incorporated into the packaging of beauty and personal care products to woo local consumers, while the design of closures can also cater to consumers' changing needs. To address the needs of time-pressed consumers, self-foaming closures are applied for face cleansers and liquid hand soap, which prolongs the use of such products and is therefore well received among consumers.

Croxsons, a renowned bottle manufacturer in the UK proudly announce their involvement with the ISC 2014. The company supported the awards, with Tim Croxson judging the large numbers of entries for their design and packaging, amongst some top spirit producers and designers of the world. Choosing who won each of the ISC awards meant examining the work quality and commitment to provide only genuine products from nominees, and winning an award is therefore a big deal.

Possessing expert art handlers in NYC, Cirkers now offers unmatched packing and crafting services at the most competitive prices. The company’s internal staff possesses the experience of more than a century in the particulars of packing and crafting of fine art, antiques and decorative art. Indeed, it is true that the crafting designs are seamlessly designed for augmenting the beneficial factors of the latest technologies and materials. No one has to worry about the quality, as they will undoubtedly offer customers the highest-quality materials. In addition to this, they are more suitable for the objects that are being packed and used for the process. The complete range of packing services also includes the finest wrapping and packing materials for one-way shipping, tough museum quality, one-way and round-trip crates, durable travel frames that exceed industry standards, and multiple use traveling exhibition crates.

Volume growth of tobacco packaging in China in 2012 was slightly slower than in 2011, mainly due to the stricter government control over smoking in public places in China. With China's entry into the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in 2005, a ban on smoking in public places, such as hospitals, schools and public transportation, has been in place in China since January 2011.

The key event of 2013 was the full return of PepsiCo to the country with the launch of a KES2.6 billion soft drinks manufacturing plant. The company now has a plant in Kenya with the capacity to manufacture around 600 bottles per minute, thus showing its intention to seize the growing opportunities available in the Kenyan market. PepsiCo's manufacturing presence in the country is expected to help it cut its operational costs, thus freeing up cash for a price war with its rival Coca-Cola.

Overall, home care products is a very mature and saturated market, offering few growth opportunities. Apart from that, many other factors work against value and volume sales, for example, demographic ones, lifestyle-related ones, as well as those concerning the product properties. Fewer children on the one hand and more (very) old people on the other hand mean less demand for specific products. Also, with ever-busier lifestyles many people have considerably less time and willingness to do...