In one of his last acts as the incumbent president of the Australian Institute of Packaging (AIP), Pierre Pienaar welcomed delegates to the organisation’s 2012 national conference with the hope they would experience “light bulb moments, epiphanies, life changing contacts … and loads of fun!”
While PKN is loathe to report on just how much “fun” delegates actually had outside the official presentations, it can certainly attest to this year’s speakers delivering more than their share of light bulb moments to conference attendees.
Indeed, following the 2010 event which had a heavy emphasis on examining the issues of sustainability in the packaging chain, this year’s conference seemed to touch on just about every hot button issue confronting the industry today – from accessibility and product stewardship to materials and equipment innovations, to how the country’s major grocery retailers are driving many of today’s packaging trends and how digital technology is revolutionising packaging design and consumer engagement with products.
If it was a wide scope of topics to cover, the calibre of presenters generally lived up to the event’s billing, and its aim of presenting a picture of the “packaging road ahead”.
The tone was set from the outset by the first two keynote speakers, the president of the World Packaging Organisation (WPO), Thomas Schneider, who travelled to the event from the USA, and the managing director of local food giant Simplot, Terry O’Brien.
O’Brien’s presentation in particular was oft-mentioned over the event's two days as one of the highlights of the conference, touching upon the economic, political and social pressures facing the industry today and the impact the industry’s various stakeholders – from farmers to converters to consumers – were having on the course of packaging industry developments.
In a bid to paint a realistic picture of why the food manufacturing sector finds itself in its current state of demise, O’Brien bucked the current retailer-bashing trend and rather than blame private label growth and pressure on margins as a result of the powerful retailer duopoly, he pointed instead to Australia’s lack of scale – on the farm, in the factory and in the market.
He was quite hard hitting when he spoke of union pressures for across-the-board increases that in his view are short sighted, especially in the face of rising input costs for manufacturers, including the carbon tax, that could soon put many out of business.
The way forward as he sees it is a “hybrid model”, where local manufacturers (food and packaging companies) will have to retain some onshore operations, but also have offshore operations as well as supplement their portfolio with some imported goods. Food manufacturers in the strongest position would be those who concentrate on ‘protected markets’ – by which he means niche sectors that have a short supply chain where the risk for customers is too high to source product offshore.
He reckons Australian companies have to “service the hell out of the customer to the point where they have to take a risk to move to a longer supply chain”.
When the opening keynote presentations finished, the conference got down to business with the first of its breakout sessions. Packaging accessibility was the focus for three speakers, Wendy Favorito from Arthritis Australia, Carmen Rechbauer from NSW Health, and Nestlé Australia’s packaging specialist Jacky Norsdvan.
Favorito spoke of the “living nightmare” difficult-to-open packaging inflicted on arthritis suffers and the elderly, and expressed her hope that packaging companies would soon come to view easy openability as a competitive advantage as the average population aged in Australia.
Rechbauer, for her part, spoke of NSW Health’s efforts to embed accessibility firmly within its procurement policies, while Nestlé's Norsdvan outlined the food company’s efforts to include accessibility in its ongoing product packaging developments.
The conference then turned a fine focus on the nitty-gritty of technical matters as the sessions shifted to discussion of such discreet industry sectors as labelling, flexible films and laser coding and marking.
It was during these sessions that Amcor Flexibles Asia Pacific general manager Australia & New Zealand, Anne O’Hara, delivered another much talked-about address, this time a spirited defence of the sustainability credentials of the packaging industry in general, and flexibles packaging in particular.
O’Hara took to task much of the criticism of packaging in the ongoing sustainability debate.
She said that instead of speaking about packaging “sustainability”, society should focus more on packaging “responsibility”.
“If you compare energy use per person, food packaging is less than transport, travel, heating and lighting. And the most important part of packaging is to protect the product,” she said.
“The big problem is, you see the packaging waste, but you don’t see
the food waste.”
The event’s first day ended with a glimpse into the future of packaging product development by the general manager of Colorpak division Brandpack, Peter Allison, and a demonstration of how digital virtual design tools can streamline, enhance and add value to
the packaging design process.
Day two kicked off with another highlight as representatives of the two great retail rivals Coles and Woolworths took to the stage together in a panel chaired by the Australian Food and Grocery Council’s Samantha Blake to discuss retail ready packaging (RRP).
Probably the biggest surprise of the panel session was how much the two retail representatives – Woolworths’ general manager of strategy, Rod Evenden, and the general manager of Coles’ supply chain transformation Matt Swindell – agreed with each other, rather than come across as bitter competitors. Apart from the ”pinky finger” difference in shelf depth used between the two chains, it appeared the trend towards RRP was a uniting factor between the two rather than a differentiator.
“People think Coles and Woolworths want different standards, but that is not true, most of what we want is the same,” Evenden candidly admitted.
Both agreed that RRP had the potential to bring benefits right across the retail chain, from manufacturers who could ensure their products gained valuable shelf real estate, to brand owners who could use it as an opportunity to further their brand recognition, to the retailers themselves who could streamline shelf stocking and back room storage, to, finally, the consumer who could now expect fresher and more ample stocks of their favourite purchases on store shelves.
The RRP theme continued after the panel session, when two competitors again took to the stage– CHEP’s director of strategic marketing, Renee Holbrook, and the general manager of business development for Loscam Asia Pacific, David Edwards, outlined how RRP was now revolutionising practices within the bulk transport and logistics sector.
The “green” role for various popular packaging materials in the supply chain was then touched on by the general manager for technical and fibre optimisation for Visy, Peter Allen, who discussed the company’s new R Flute corrugated fluting profile and its role
in enabling more efficient transport of goods in the supply chain, and O-I Oceania’s director of environmental health and safety, Steve Bourke, who explained the glass company’s approach to life cycle assessment and the credentials of glass packaging as a reusable packaging medium.
The closing sessions of the conference zeroed in on some crystal ball gazing in keeping with the theme of “The Road Ahead”.
After the AIP’s veteran packaging industry advocate Emeritius Professor Harry Lovell gave his view of the key packaging developments from his more than half-century in the industry, the WPO’s Thomas Schneider bookended his opening address to the conference with a closing session on how the industry can learn from the practices of different cultures by getting a fresh perspective on otherwise seemingly mundane issues.
