Five things we learned at FachPack 2024
This year’s packaging industry gathering in Nuremburg was bigger and better than ever. Here’s what we took away from the exhibition…
This year’s FachPack was as busy and bustling as ever, with Sappi among nearly 1,500 exhibitors who played host to no fewer than 35,000 visitors from all over the world. The show’s main theme was ‘Transition in Packaging’, which provided a strong focus for three days of presentations, discussions and revelations – among them new Sappi barrier papers, label papers and premium paperboard.
That theme of change and transition in packaging was also reflected in many of the conversations enjoyed by members of our Sappi team with customers at the show – which gave us pause for thought on these five topics in particular…
The circular economy is here to stay – and genuine packaging recyclability is only going to get more important.
As sales manager Max Dölle remarks:
“Recyclability is no longer a nice thing to have, but increasingly the licence you need to take out to enter the market at all.”
EU regulators need to do a better job explaining EUDR.
It’s no surprise that implementation of the new EU Deforestation Regulation has been postponed for a year, because there’s still so much uncertainty around its details, workings and likely effects. As Emanuele Bulsis says:
“Many people are still very confused about EUDR, and why wouldn’t they be? There’s a real lack of clear information coming from the EU – which is why we work so hard ourselves to help clarify things for our customers.”
Packaging in paper is the new normal.
Market manager Sibylle Hajostek has a long-term view of the transition here.
“At Fachpack less than 10 years ago, we were seeing only packaging materials made from plastics and zero sustainability claims.”
“Fast-forward to this year and fibre-based functional papers are highly visible – and exhibited side-by-side with plastics by most big converters and OEMs.”
There’s no substitute for meeting face-to face.
Too true. As Emanuele Bulsis puts it:
“Fachpack was a great opportunity to meet our customers in the flesh and have some really productive conversations about futureproofing their business.”
