At Tokyo Pack 2026, wearing my hat as president of the International Packaging Press Organisation, I had the opportunity of presenting “Global insights: trends and innovation shaping circular outcomes” to a symposium audience, at the invitation of the Japan Packaging Institute.
My session sat between those of two colleagues: Tim Sykes, brand director, Packaging Europe, who explained the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and what it means for companies exporting into Europe, and Nerida Kelton, WPO vice president, Sustainability who spoke on packaging’s role in reducing food loss and waste.
The International Packaging Press Organisation brings together packaging journalists from around the world. That gives us an unusual vantage point. We see not only individual innovations, but the patterns emerging across markets. My aim was to share some of those patterns.
Many of the pressures behind the PPWR are not unique to Europe. Across global markets, packaging is being asked to do more – environmentally, technically and commercially. Europe is a natural starting point, but only a starting point.
Different drivers, converging questions
Look beyond Europe and many of the same questions are being asked. How can we use less material? How can we simplify packaging structures? How can we incorporate more recycled material? How can we make reuse work? And how can we improve recovery after use?
The drivers are not identical. In some markets, regulation leads. In others, brand commitments, retailer requirements, infrastructure constraints or material costs play a stronger role. But the direction of travel is becoming more consistent.
This year’s WorldStar Packaging Awards reflected that: 234 winners from 36 countries, with the judges noting the same themes of material efficiency, circular design and smart technologies running through them. Japan led the field, with 24 winners.
The question is no longer only what a pack is made from, but how it performs across its whole life – on the production line, through distribution and after use.
Across what IPPO members report, and at international exhibitions, I see five signals recurring: Reduce, Simplify, Recirculate, Reuse and Connect. They are not separate. The strongest packaging innovations often address two or three at once.
And packaging still has to protect, preserve, perform, communicate and delight. Preservation matters most of all. When food is lost or wasted, so is everything that went into producing it – which often carries a far bigger footprint than the pack that protects it. Sustainability does not remove any of those functions. It asks packaging to deliver all of them with fewer resources, and to enable recovery. That is a much more demanding brief.
Reduce: use less, waste less
Reduction is becoming much more sophisticated than simply making a package lighter.
In the US, Procter & Gamble’s Head & Shoulders BARE Ecobottle uses 45 per cent less plastic per millilitre than the brand’s standard 370-millilitre bottle. The flexible format can also be squeezed and rolled to get more product out. That is two forms of waste reduction: less packaging material and less residual product.
In Australia, Heliograf and Vert Design developed Holy Carp, a moulded plant-fibre alternative to the plastic soy fish used with sushi. It is a very small piece of packaging, but one used in enormous numbers and difficult to recover. The fibre version removes that plastic format altogether.
And in India, Q-Bic punnets, developed by Smart Packaging Industries and manufactured through AVI Global Plast, interlock into cube-like blocks once filled. The developers say this can double the number of packs on a pallet.
So reduction can mean using less material, eliminating a problematic format, or designing out wasted space.
Simplify: design for recovery
If Reduce asks how much material we need, Simplify asks how we design the package around a credible recovery pathway.
The first route is to remove something. In China, Yili Group redesigned the PET bottle and label for its Ambrosial yoghurt around recycling. Carbon black has been removed from both bottle and label, and the label uses what Yili describes as the industry’s first alkali-washable de-inking technology. During recycling the ink comes off, so it does not contaminate the recycled PET stream.
The second is to simplify the structure. At interpack, Belgian digital press maker Xeikon printed directly onto a high-barrier mono-polypropylene film developed by Germany’s Polifilm, with primers from Actega and pouches converted by Gruber-Folien. Because the scratch-resistant print needs no protective laminate, the pack stays a single material – and converting can start straight away, instead of waiting two or three days for a laminate to cure.
The third is to design for separation. In Japan, Lion Corporation and Toyo Ink developed a multilayer refill pouch with a reformulated adhesive. It holds firm during use, but the films separate in a mild alkaline solution, so each material can be recovered.
The move to paper and fibre also came through strongly at interpack. Swiss companies AISA Automation Industrielle and Neopac Group unveiled the PaperX FiberTop tube, which they describe as the world’s first fully certifiable recyclable paper tube. It contains 87 per cent paper and fibre and is designed for the paper recycling stream; even its cap, developed by Swedish company Blue Ocean Closures, is around 95 per cent fibre. Sappi and Huhtamaki showed a recyclable paper-based ice-cream cone sleeve to replace the aluminium foil-paper laminate long used in the category, while still keeping the cone crisp, resisting grease and performing in the freezer.
Almost every one of these examples is a partnership between film makers, printers, converters, ink specialists and brands. That is increasingly how packaging innovation reaches the market.
Recirculate: put materials back to work
This is where the distinction between recyclable and recycled matters. A pack can be technically recyclable and still never become another pack. Recirculation is about closing more of that gap.
The Australian KitKat proof of concept tackled one of the more technically challenging areas: recycled content in food-contact flexible packaging. Nestlé worked with Viva Energy, Taghleef Industries and Amcor to produce seven million ISCC-certified wrappers carrying a minimum 70 per cent recycled-plastic claim using mass balance – an allocated claim, rather than a measure of recycled content in each individual wrapper.
There is one qualification. The pyrolysis oil was imported, because suitable Australian feedstock is not yet available at commercial scale, so this was not a fully Australian closed loop. What the project proved was capability across refining, polymer manufacture, film production, converting and food packaging. Recirculation needs all of it: recovered material, recycling capability and markets that will put that material back to work.
Reuse: the pack is only the beginning
Reuse sounds deceptively simple: make a durable package and use it again. But the package is the more straightforward part. The harder question is the system around it.
RePlay is a two-year trial in New Zealand, developed by Bonson Packaging and hosted by grocery retailer Foodstuffs. It uses reusable deli containers with a permanent QR code on an in-mould label, plus a return system. It is a trial, not yet evidence of a commercially proven model. It is testing what reuse requires in practice: will consumers return the pack, where, how it is collected and washed, how quickly it re-enters circulation, and at what cost?
Movopack, from Italy, applies the same thinking to e-commerce, with mailers designed to be returned and sent out again.
Different applications, but the same challenge. A reusable pack can be designed; a viable reuse system has to be built.
Connect: make circularity visible
For years, we have asked whether packaging is technically recyclable or reusable. Digital tools now let us check what actually happened to it. I see three related functions: identify, track and verify.
To identify, Polytag in the UK and DataLase use a laser-activated coating in the pack artwork to create a permanent QR code directly on the pack, with no extra inks or labels. Each code can carry batch, expiry and serialisation data, supporting traceability, recalls and future Digital Product Passport requirements.
To track, Borrow by Huskee runs an app-based reusable cup system in Sydney. Each cup carries a unique QR code implemented to GS1 standards. Customers scan a cup to borrow it, then return it to a participating café or a Smart Bin, generating real-time data on borrowing, returns and how often each cup comes back into circulation.
To verify, German company BERICAP demonstrated QR-coded closures at interpack. Even a small component like a closure can become a link to product information.
All three examples use a QR code – and that points to a change every brand owner, converter and printer should be preparing for. Under GS1’s Sunrise 2027 initiative, the goal is for retail checkouts worldwide to be able to scan 2D barcodes, such as QR codes using GS1 Digital Link, by the end of 2027. The familiar linear barcode will not disappear overnight; the two will sit side by side for some time. But a single 2D code can identify the product at the checkout, carry batch and expiry data, and connect consumers to product and recycling information. For all markets, that means artwork, printing and data systems need to be ready now.
In sorting, Europe’s HolyGrail initiative has shown that invisible digital watermarks can tell sorting machines what a pack is made of, so it goes into the right material stream.
These technologies do different jobs. But they point in one direction: from designing packaging for circularity to proving what happens to it.
From prototype to production
We often talk about packaging materials as if they were separate from the production line. They are not. Change a substrate, reduce a gauge, add recycled content, move from a laminate to a mono-material, or replace plastic with fibre – and you can change how that material behaves in converting, filling and sealing. A new structure may look excellent in the laboratory. But can it form consistently, seal within the production window, protect the product and hold quality at commercial line speeds?
Mars’s move to paper-based wrappers in Australia needed machinery and process changes to bring the format onto commercial lines. Syntegon and Sappi show how that adaptation can happen without replacing the line. Their confectionery partnership dates back to 2021, when a chocolate producer converted to Sappi barrier paper after fitting Syntegon’s paper-ON-form retrofit kit to its existing flow-wrapping machinery. Syntegon says the retrofit has since been installed for numerous customers. For brand owners with major investment in existing lines, that is what makes the switch realistic.
The same applies to flexible plastics: moving from a multilayer laminate to a mono-material film usually narrows the sealing window, so sealing systems have to be adapted. The progression is simple – material innovation, machinability, scale. An innovation that cannot make that journey remains a promising prototype rather than a meaningful packaging solution.
The whole view
Reduction, simplification, recirculation, reuse and connectivity are developing at different speeds in different markets, but the innovation questions are converging – and none works well in isolation. RePlay is a reuse system, but it relies on connectivity: a QR code on every container. The Lion refill pouch simplifies the structure so the material can be recirculated. And the fibre shift only scales if the machinery can run it, which is exactly the problem Syntegon and Sappi set out to solve.
No single company can deliver circularity on its own. It depends on material suppliers, machine builders, brand owners, retailers and recyclers – and on collection, sorting, recycling, reuse and data.
That is the distinction I left the Tokyo Pack audience with. Innovation is changing the packaging. Circularity requires changing the system.
Slides: © PKN Packaging News. All images used on the slides have been previously published with permission on PKN.
