When companies choose suppliers that align with their sustainability values, ink is often overlooked. Is vegan ink sustainable?

Christmas is, of course, a peak selling season, when wallets are prised open. To be prepared as a marketer for this season is to have your antenna up for every twist and turn in the marketplace and to be agile in your responses.

In the world of packaging, Christmas should be the time to push the boat out and make a statement. It’s a time to throw off the shackles of brand guidelines and practicality. To have some fun and wow your customers.

When there are millions or billions of product items being moved around there’s suddenly a huge task to store all of that data. Product serialization is turning major packaging providers into data management specialists as they seek to bring the benefits of the process to their customers.

There’s plenty of buzz in the pharmaceutical industry press about the potential of 3D printing and robotics to revolutionise how pharma products are manufactured and distributed. What gets less attention is how these innovations will affect pharma packaging.

Pharma packaging is a fast growing and most fascinating market sector. It’s not just market growth that makes pharma packaging such an exciting opportunity. It's also how the packaging industry is adapting to changes in the healthcare sector.

Medical packaging has tended to be functional, set in its ways, and not that exciting. It was mainly there to protect the contents and perhaps carry a brand message. But big changes are looming in healthcare. Could custom packaging be one of the trends that enables those changes to happen?

Reducing plastic waste and improving sustainability are hot topics in the packaging industry. Recycled plastics, bioplastics and biodegradable plastics offer more sustainable options to virgin plastics. But which is the best alternative?

Good packaging tells a product’s story before the box is opened. These industry shifts and purchasing habits are influencing packaging trends.

Sourcing packaging locally, apart from the crucial benefit of shortening a dodgy supply chain, has other significant benefits, which add up to giving our customers much greater control and certainty.

Packaging matters, and no more than in the global pharmaceutical industry. Trust, adherence to regulations, customer health, shareholder value - they all rely on getting the right product, with the right freshness and in the correct dosage to the right person. With 4.5 trillion doses delivered annually, it’s a complex and multifaceted challenge.

Addicted as we all may be to The Crown, Ted Lasso or The Mandalorian, serialisation is much more than binge-watching TV on rainy nights. It is, in fact, the next wave – a new season, if you like – of digital printing.

It’s not just brown boxes or noisy crisp bags anymore - packaging has a fascinating future as the line between online and reality blurs further.

COVID-19 has shown us all how interdependent we are, and how unexpected events like a cargo ship getting stuck in a faraway canal can bring world commerce to its knees. While supply chains have been - and continue to be - strained and shortages will continue, global cooperation has shown us how resilient we can be when put to the test.

How do brands continue to squeeze brand equity out of their packaging while responding to the demand for sustainable production of everything from light bulbs to boxes? We’ve identified these four trends.