On-demand, right-size packaging automation
Customize e-commerce box or mailer sizes for both single and multiple item orders.
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Learn more: westrock.com/right-sizing
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We are your strategic partner for packaging excellence.
Our people, products, and services ensure seamless processes, innovative technologies, and sustainable solutions. Based on your needs, challenges, and opportunities, we are committed to strengthening your market position and fueling your growth. At Syntegon, we co-create and co-succeed.
Discover how we can elevate your processing and packaging solutions in the food and pharmaceutical industries, and service.
Arti cial intelligence is making an impact on factory automation, and packaging automation in particular, by way of AI copilots that converse in common language to troubleshoot, write code, help with changeovers, and more.
AI Makes Landfall on CPG Factory Automation
At Rockwell’s Automation Fair, you couldn’t swing a PLC from an ethernet cable without hitting an example of automation with freshly integrated small language model or optical AI. Real world use cases from the likes of Unilever and Danone are de ning what AI’s role will be in packaging automation.
• 42 Unilever Deploys LogixAI for Perfect Fill on Hellmann’s Line
• 48 Danone’s Data Management Tool to Get AI Boost?
• 52 New B&R Coding Environment Features AI Assistant
• 54 Dove Bottles Get Prescriptive QC via VisionAI
• 60 FactoryTalk Design Studio Adds Generative AI Copilot
• 62 AI Copilot Added to Other PLC Programming Suites
• 68 LLM AI-supported Engineering from Beckhoff
• 70 Packaging World Survey: AI Chat-enabled Packaging Machines to the Rescue?
What’s in Store for CPGs in 2025 and Beyond?
The packaging landscape, and the wider CPG and brand owner ecosystem, are changing faster than ever. Packaging World’s inaugural Annual Outlook report takes aim to benchmark those changes, and follow trends and shifts in sentiment as they quickly evolve to keep up with this rapid pace of change.
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Driven by consumer demand for more sustainable packaging, CPGs turn to new materials such as paper and bio-based/compostable plastic, but higher costs, material complexity, and other limitations may slow adoption.
According to a Packaging World Survey, CPGs are paradoxically either adding or not adding automation and robotics for very similar, predictable reasons.
The Packaging Workforce: Hiring, Retention, and Training in a Changing Industry
Packaging industry companies are nding challenges in nding, keeping, and training workers to handle increasingly advanced machinery.
Compostable Seafood Shipper Insulation Supports Brand’s Mission
D2C business Wild Alaskan Company ships its sustainably harvested, wild seafood using bio-based foam insulation that is home and industrially compostable as well as water soluble.
Delivering Results. With Heat and Control, you have a partner with the scale to support your success, the innovation to advance your operations, and a commitment to quality that will help you offer better products for consumers.
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Aladin Alkhawam Supply Chain Security Director, Endo International plc
Jan Brücklmeier Technical Application Group Packaging Technology Expert, Nestlé
M. Shawn French Director – Innovation & Packaging Engineering (Beverage), Danone North America
Patrick Keenan R&D Packaging Engineer, General Mills/Annie’s Organic Snacks
Mike Marcinkowski Director of R&D Material Science, Packaging & Sustainability – Nature’s
David Smith, PhD Principal, David S. Smith & Associates
Brian Stepowany Packaging R&D, Senior Manager, B&G Foods, Inc.
Jasmine Sutherland President, Texas Food Solutions; Vice President, Perfect Fit Meals
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Engineered with cutting-edge all-servo technology, the VARIO-SIF2 delivers extremely reliable packaging of a wide variety of products across various industries.Over 500 XQLWVKDYHEHHQLQVWDOOHGLQQXPHURXVÀHOGVVXFKDVIRRG pharmaceutical, health and wellness foods, and chemical products.
Perfect for high-mix industries like co-packing, the changeRYHUSURFHVVLVVLPSOLÀHGDVRQO\DIHZSDUWVQHHGWREH changed without any tools. The ALL-Servo drive of the VARIOSIF2 makes an automatic changeover possible, eliminating XQQHFHVVDU\ÀQHWXQLQJWLPHDIWHUFKDQJHRYHU6RUHJDUGless of who performs the work and when, you can be assured that an accurate changeover takes place every time.As a result, the VARIO-SIF2 outputs good products right after the changeover is completed, keeping your production HIÀFLHQF\UDWHVKLJK
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Tropicana was recently in the news with a package redesign miscue. According to CNN, sales dropped by 19% year-over-year due to the design swap. Tropicana underwent a similar fiasco in 2009 that became a case study in packaging redesign, so the brand’s repeat offender status may be magnifying scrutiny in the package design space. In this case, a 14-yearold custom carafe-style PET bottle with hefty closure was replaced with a slimmer, simpler, perhaps stock PET bottle and closure. The redesign impacted two formats: a larger multi-serve bottle that shrunk from 52 to 46 oz, and a single serve that shrunk from 12 to 11 oz.
I just used a magic word—shrunk—that conjures the specter of shrinkflation. But not so fast. The larger multi-serve bottle also dropped in price such that per-oz price dropped. The single serve stayed the same price, so that was a case of shrinkflation. Between the two, according to Brent Lindberg and package design agency Fuseneo, you could call it more of a case of “shrinkquivalence.” More from Lindberg soon, but some portion of the blowback was doubtlessly at the hands of the mere perception of shrinkflation.
So why the package design shift? The company cites plastic reduction for sustainability purposes—with 61% less plastic used in in the 46-oz bottle, and 52% less in the 11-oz. The new closure also obviates induction seal consumers had needed to remove.
In a statement, a Tropicana spokesperson said it also wanted “…to directly address feedback we’ve received from [the consumer]. This includes changing the shape of our bottle so it’s easier to pour and store as well as upgrading to a more streamlined and sustainable cap made with less plastic that’s easier to open.” While the brand didn’t cite cost as a reason, it’s also true that a move from custom to stock packaging that uses a lot less material is also cheaper.
“In my opinion, this was a miscalculation,” says Lindberg at Fuseneo, who designed the legacy carafe bottle. “With their majority sale to private equity in 2021, they likely needed to see better margins. I think the numbers drove the decision more than the consumer. There are a lot of positive moves they are making as a company, but I don’t think this is one of them.”
A brand faces a choice when considering a package design change. They can spend a lot of time, energy, and money on regional testing and soft launches that might deter them from making a switch.
“A commercial change like this can cost north of $100 million depending on the level of infrastructure change,” Lindberg says. “Any type of soft launch is very expensive, time consuming, and can show your hand to your competition. … It’s a risk regardless. All change is risk, but for that matter, so is stagnation.”
On the other hand, if a brand is determined to realize potential sustainability and cost efficiency improvements, even understanding that there will be consumer attrition, they can swiftly rip off the Band-Aid, incur any negative reaction all at once, and promptly commence with getting consumers familiar with buying the new bottle.
We can’t be certain, but the latter may have been the brand’s calculus. And it may turn out to have been a wise choice. A spokesperson said, “These types of changes can take time, and recent third-party data shows that unit sales are returning to normal levels. In addition, a recent survey we conducted of 1,300 loyal consumers confirms they are responding positively to the new bottle: nearly half say the updated packaging has improved their perception of Tropicana, and among those who have purchased the new bottle more than 70% say it will make them more likely to purchase it again. We will also continue to do what we can to further help shoppers get accustomed to our new look, including investing in advertising and in-store elements.”
Lindberg conjectures: “I’m not sure if they didn’t conduct much research with their consumers or if they got a false read by seeking to affirm rather than learn, but I think more research would have been critical. Understanding your consumer is paramount. That may have told them that they were OK with a new bottle, but not a smaller size. It may have told them that the shape can change, but there needs to be more in common with the current bottle. It may have even told them there would be a revolt if anything changed [but might proceed anyway to rip off the Band-Aid]. Who knows. It’s easy to provide feedback with hindsight.”
Tropicana weathered its 2009 redesign mishap and soon after landed on the iconic bottle whose retirement is causing all the hubbub today. Time will tell, but a similar reascendance seems like as likely an outcome as any. PW
mreynolds@pmmimediagroup.com
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New from Nwär Skin is a line of facial products expressly developed to address both the wasteful packaging and the product overconsumption endemic to the beauty industry. The Seid line of facial cleanser and facial balm is the brainchild of company founder Chandra Davis, an esthetician whose mission to create sustainable skin care packaging began in 2019 after she watched the empty beauty-product packages she had carefully cleaned and separated for recycling get tossed into a garbage truck, destined for land ll.
“At the time, I was selling a product in acrylic jars. But I could not in good conscience continue to sell those anymore, just assuming people would recycle them and assuming the recycling would end up where it’s supposed to. There was just too much room for human error,” she says. “So I wanted to create a product that addressed the afterlife of product packaging speci cally.”
Researching packaging materials, Davis determined paper to be the least damaging to the environment while also providing up to six uses before it becomes too degraded for use. She says her research also showed that aluminum and glass, while also highly recoverable, are very energy intensive to source and recycle in comparison.
From a consumer standpoint, paper was the perfect t as well, since “consumers don’t have to learn anything new on how to recycle it,” Davis says. “It’s as easy as tossing the box in the bin. When they’re done, boom, it’s over. They don’t have to clean anything out, they don’t have to separate anything.” And, she adds, if the packaging ends up in the land ll, it won’t be as harmful as plastic.
After selecting paper as the primary packaging material, Davis set about to develop a product that would align with the end goal for the carton: biodegradability and compostability. Moving from a skin care cream in an acrylic jar to a biodegradable product that could be packaged in a paper carton without using plastic required Davis to completely reimagine the product format, however.
The solution is a tiny strip, measuring 1.5 x 0.75 in., that contains the product ingredients. Much like breath strips or laundry detergent sheets, the product dissolves when it comes in contact with water. Unlike those products, however, it does not use petroleum-based PVOH (polyvinyl alcohol) plastic to bind the ingredients together. Instead, the proprietary product uses 100% bio-based plant polysaccharides as a carrier for a number of natural ingredients, including plant actives and oils.
Initially the strip was longer, Davis says, but she reduced the size after considering how regularly clients at her shop in Chicago, Nwär Studios, overuse product—especially with the recent popularity of the 12-step Korean skin care routine. “You don’t need that. As a matter of fact, your skin
doesn’t want that,” she says. “So with my products, I want to teach people that: one, less is more, and two, if you are true to your sustainable mission, using less is more as well.
“It’s all about controlling your consumption and reeling it back in to where you don’t need as much as you think you do.”
Seid Altered Perceptions Facial Cleanser and Seid Conscious Commitments Facial Balm products come in a dainty, palm-sized paperboard carton that’s perforated along the front and bottom panel to allow for easy access to the product strips. There are 180 per box—enough for day and evening use for three months.
Not only is it easy to store on a bathroom shelf, the box is also ideal for travel, eliminating the need for consumers to purchase additional, travelsize bottles of their favorite skin care products or buy separate containers to store their products for travel—another material-reduction bene t.
The carton is full-color printed to differentiate the products: The cleanser uses green, with photography of a forest, and the balm uses blue, with water imagery. (The products are likewise colored green and blue, respectively, using plant dyes.) Davis has plans to replace the carbonemitting inks used on the cartons with inks made from algae, when they become available in colors other than black. The carton is covered with a clear lm overwrap and, for shipping, it’s packaged in a 100% PCR corrugated box, printed with black algae ink from EcoEnclose
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Davis says she received “ ve-star, glowing reviews” from everyone who tried the product during its development, as well as from those who have purchased it since it was launched in September 2024. “They really do enjoy the concept of it and what it could be in the future,” she says. “It’s still a bit novel, so it’s not trendy, but I could see it being a trendy thing, which is what I really want to shy away from. I don’t want this to be a trend. I want this to be a solution, a viable solution to the climate crisis and people trying to reduce their carbon footprint. As a consumer, I want that to be the end goal for it.”
Nwar Skin’s Seid line is available on the company’s website, with the cleanser priced at $48 and the balm at $52. —Anne Marie Mohan
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Maxwell Williams found a passion for package design and sustainability through his studies, participating in packaging competitions, interning in Clemson University’s Sonoco Prototyping Lab, and Clemson’s rst student run comprehensive packaging consulting and design rm, The Brown Box Agency. He also worked to branch outside Clemson’s campus to complete his co-op with PepsiCo in packaging R&D, and intern with The Packaging School where he aided in creating educational content for both industry novices and professionals. In February 2025, Williams begins a full-time position with Newell Brands as an associate packaging engineer.
Tim Oeser graduated from Clemson University majoring in Packaging Science with a minor in Business Administration. His passion for people and packaging has been developed at Clemson through being a packaging design intern, a packaging dynamics teaching assistant, and a research assistant developing chemical recycling methods. The industry has also caught his interest through co-ops at Dow Chemical and Pregis, as well as a summer internship at IPS Packaging. His proudest achievement is leading the Clemson Packaging Science Club, a club dedicated to engaging students with industry professionals. Oeser began at at Nestlé Purina as a packaging specialist upon his graduation in December 2024, and says he is incredibly grateful for all of those who helped him become the person he is today. —Matt Reynolds
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The U.S. PET bottle recycling rate reached new heights in 2023, according to the National Association for PET Container Resources’ (NAPCOR) “2023 PET Recycling Report.” The collection rate was 33% in 2023, up 4% from 29% in 2022 and was the highest recycling rate for PET in the U.S. since 1996.
Notes the report, this increase was due to the growth in PET plastic bottles collected and fewer bottles available for recycling compared to 2022. In 2023, the U.S. collected 1,962 million lb of PET bottles for recycling, which was the highest annual weight for U.S. bottle collection ever recorded, up from 1,911 million lb in 2022—an increase of 2.7%.
The total pounds of PET bottles available for recycling in the U.S. in 2023 was 5,952 million lb, down 9.8% from 6,599 million lb in 2022. Domestic sales of virgin and rPET resin to non-food/ beverage bottle applications, e.g., personal care packaging and household cleaners, were down by signi cant margins compared to 2022.
As a result of voluntary brand commitments and legislation, including recent mandatory recycled-content laws, the trend of increasing rPET content in U.S. bottles has accelerated in recent years as well after remaining at between 6 and 7% between 2014 and 2017. In 2023, the rate of rPET content in U.S. bottles reached an all-time high of 16.2%. The amount of rPET used in U.S. bottles in 2023 increased to 966 million lb from 870
million lb in 2022, an 11% difference. Of the total usage of recycled PET in U.S. and Canadian end markets, the fraction that went to bottle applications reached a new high of 59% in 2023, surpassing the previous record of 54% in 2022.
North America (the U.S., Canada, and Mexico) also achieved a signi cant milestone in recycling, reaching a new high of 41.3% in 2023, once again surpassing the global standard set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In 2016, the foundation de ned successful recycling as achieving a 30% recycling rate across regions with a combined population of at least 400 million. Since 2019, when NAPCOR began tracking the North American rate, the region’s PET bottle recycling rate has consistently exceeded the 30% benchmark.
Says NAPCOR Executive Director Laura Stewart, “PET plastic bottles play a vital role in a circular economy because they can be designed to be remade, and our members are working hard to ensure they get recycled. NAPCOR’s ‘2023 PET Recycling Report’ shows that while there were fewer PET bottles available to recycle in the U.S., there were still more PET bottles recycled in 2023, resulting in a higher recovery percentage. When manufacturers, consumers, retailers, and recyclers work together to ensure PET is selected, collected, and recycled, our planet reaps the rewards.”
—Anne Marie Mohan
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Given its intrinsic connection to the world’s oceans and the communities that live near them, Norwegian Cruise Line is committed to reducing both onboard waste and waste to land ll as part of its Sail & Sustain global sustainability program. As of 2023, NCL had diverted 48% of its total ship waste from land lls. This achievement was partly due to eliminating single-use plastic straws in 2018 and plastic water bottles in 2020 across its eet, making it the rst cruise line to do so. Most recently, it removed the need for plastic lm wrap on in-room breakfast deliveries by switching to reusable Bento box-style serviceware made with 50% certi ed recycled PET.
The Bento box offers two sustainability bene ts: reuse and PCR content. The box, with lid and insert, is supplied by Drinique and is part of its reuseme collection of reusable Bento boxes. The components are made from Eastman Tritan Renew, a copolyester that includes 50% recycled content derived from molecular recycling technology. Eastman’s methanolysis molecular recycling process breaks down PET waste into its chemical building blocks, which are then used to create Tritan Renew.
Says Mark Kansley, senior vice president of Hotel Operations for Norwegian Cruise Line, “When looking to partner with a food serviceware provider, we were primarily searching for a way to reduce single-use plastics on board our ships. Additionally, we wanted to provide guests with a simpler, more exible option for breakfast in bed. The Bento box offers them the opportunity to enjoy the food from the comfort of their bed as well as cover it and save it for later. Lastly, they also increase functionality for our onboard team as they are lighter and more stackable.”
NCL is using Drinique’s REU-LB Little Bento box, which measures 12 x 10 x 2.5 in., with a Tritan Renew lid that snaps on securely without separate connectors. It also uses an 8-oz square insert/partition inside the box. The serviceware is BPA-free, commercial dishwasher-, microwave-, freezer-, and hot box-safe, and is shatterproof.
According to Andrew T. Elliott, president of Drinique, “Tritan is the safest, most durable, and sustainable material available. Unlike melamine, it can be put in a microwave or freezer. It’s also lighter than many alternative materials, which reduces the carbon footprint of transportation as well as fatigue for kitchen staff who handle them.”
He adds that Drinique’s Bento boxes “can be used and washed hundreds to potentially thousands of times.”
NCL debuted the boxes on its Norwegian Prima and Norwegian Viva ships; as of year-end 2024, the boxes were rolled out eetwide. “The feedback has been extremely positive,” says Kansley. “Guests have informed us that they appreciate not needing a table to enjoy their breakfast from their stateroom as well as the ability to reseal the food.”
Because the Bento boxes have just recently been launched, Kansley does not yet have information on how much plastic wrap will be eliminated, saying, “We are focused on nding other initiatives to remove plastic lm and are targeting at least a 60% reduction overall.” —Anne Marie Mohan
Lamb Weston is now offering its U.S. foodservice customers the option to get their frozen French fries in a recyclable paper bag. The new package is the result of several years’ work by its packaging engineers to develop a format with a more sustainable end-of-life solution than exists for the company’s polyethylene bags.
“This initiative was driven by our goal to develop packaging to be recycle-ready, reusable, or compostable to reduce our Scope 3 GHG emissions as well as use less water in the production of our packaging,” explains Michael Grandinetti, senior manager packaging engineering for Lamb Weston. “We have previously offered paper bags for our products, but this redevelopment allows them to now be accepted in the paper recycle stream.”
He adds that while Lamb Weston did look at other options, such as mono-material PE (it’s also developing packaging for this outlet), paper recycling is much more readily available to the company’s foodservice customers, where back-of-house infrastructure already exists.
But the project did not come without challenges. A well-known hurdle with creating paper packaging as a replacement for lm for many frozen food items is the need for moisture and grease resistance as well as durability and machinability. Traditionally, these properties are achieved with a lm coating;
however, lm-coated bags cannot be recycled.
While Grandinetti could not share details on the supplier Lamb Weston worked with or the material technology behind the new paper bag, he does say that the material “is a proprietary blend formulated and tested to pass OCC [Old Corrugated Container] acceptance testing through Western Michigan University.” He adds that the recyclability claim is in accordance with the Green Guides published by the FTC.
In the company’s marketing materials, Lamb Weston promotes the bag as being “bio-based,” which may suggest it’s using some type of recyclable biopolymer coating to provide the required functionality.
To ensure the safety and quality of the material before it was used for product, Lamb Weston’s packaging innovation team performed numerous tests, including tests on material properties, dynamics testing, and real-world trials. “There was also close collaboration with our supplier,” Grandinetti says.
Meanwhile, the new material was also engineered to perform well with the company’s existing equipment.
The paper bag was introduced in summer 2024, receiving positive feedback from many of the company’s foodservice customers. Says Grandinetti, “Customers who have their own ESG [environmental, social, and governance] goals are appreciative of Lamb Weston providing a solution to reduce their own footprint.”
—Anne Marie Mohan
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“We trade closely with our northern and southern neighbors— recyclers in those regions treat the border more or less as a state line. Plastics recycling is very regional, so if you’re in southern Texas, then Mexico is part of that region. If you’re in northern Michigan, Canada is just as close to you—or closer—than trying to pull material from Kentucky or somewhere farther south. So those players regionally exposed to Canada and Mexico are assessing the potential impact of those proposed tariffs, as are buyers from those speci c recyclers.”
–Emily Friedman, senior editor and recycled plastics expert at ICIS, in an article from Plastics Today, “Trump Tariffs Could Take Toll on Recycled Plastics Ecosystem”
“We’re [the beauty industry] the fourth largest contributor of plastic packaging waste. Innovation is happening, but the scale of the problem is immense. Most packaging today relies on plastic, which is versatile, malleable, and inexpensive. The challenge is nding sustainable alternatives that offer the same bene ts without the environmental cost.”
–Victoria Brownlie, chief of policy and sustainability at the British Beauty Council, in an article from BeautyMatter, “Rede ning Luxury Through Sustainability: The Industry’s Call to Action”
“The Global Commitment has demonstrated the power of voluntary business action in the ght against plastic waste and pollution, keeping resources in the ground and out of our environment. Although the world remains far off track from xing this crisis, signatories continue to signi cantly outperform their peers and demonstrate the roadblocks and challenges on the path ahead. We now need to see an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution alongside voluntary action—both are crucial.”
–Aisha Stenning, lead - business action for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Initiative, in an article from EMF, “Now Live: The Global Commitment 2024 Annual Report”
“From reducing cancer-causing pollution from plastic manufacturing facilities, to increasing industry’s accountability to take back recycled plastic packaging, to capturing waste before it ends up in our bodies and the environment, this strategy lays out the path forward for EPA and our partners to tackle this persistent challenge.”
–Michael Regan, administrator for the EPA, in an announcement from the EPA on the release of the nalized National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution, as reported by Waste Dive in an article, “EPA calls for developing national EPR framework”
In September, D2C company Wild Alaskan, a purveyor of wild-caught, sustainably sourced seafood, completed the rollout of its new product packaging. Cliff Borress, executive creative director, explains how the design was used to convey the specialness of Alaska and educate consumers on ‘the best sh on the planet.’
Why did you update Wild Alaskan’s packaging graphics?
Cliff Borress:
We always felt like as a brand, we wanted to tell more stories about how Wild Alaskan is direct-to-consumer wild-caught seafood from Alaska shipped to your door, and how the sh from Alaska is by far the best sh on the planet. Our existing packaging did a good job of properly labeling things, but we just weren’t conveying that specialness of Alaska. So part of the initiative for the rebrand was about making the brand feel more Alaska and celebrating real, wild-caught sh.
We take seafood labeling very seriously. Most seafood in America is fraudulently identified, and this is something Wild Alaskan takes head on. All the fish we sell is from Alaska; it’s all processed within the U.S., so it’s really trusted. What’s interesting about the role of packaging within the seafood space is that most consumers are confused by what they’re buying, and it’s not their fault. Mislabeling and ambiguity in purchasing seafood has had the downstream effect on consumers of not entirely knowing what they’re eating or where it’s from. So you have people asking for whitefish or asking for salmon, but what kind of whitefish and what kind of salmon? We want to correct this issue for seafood consumers—people should know what they are buying. As a company selling really high-quality, trusted seafood, we wanted to make sure we are not only providing what we say but actually educating consumers and helping them understand the choices they’re making and where their food is from.
On our packaging, we properly identify and celebrate all the
individual species of seafood that come from Alaska. On each of the packs, we introduced these very accurate and beautiful illustrations [of the species]. We are not over-engineering this education, but providing subtleties so people can start to understand that all these fish are different—it’s not just whitefish. That starts to translate to the way people make purchasing decisions and approach cooking. It’s important to know cooking all fish is not the same. Also, in terms of sourcing, there is an enormous difference between Wild Alaskan Pacific halibut or Pacific cod and generic storebought tilapia or Atlantic cod.
How are you conveying the specialness of Alaska on your packaging?
When it came to the idea of feeling more Alaska, we wanted the box itself to exemplify Alaska. There are a couple of ways we did this. We’ve incorporated the Alaska State colors, so we have yellow/gold and blue showing up throughout our branding. We love the idea that this box is showing up all over the country, and it just shouts Alaska. Whether you’re in Miami or New York or wherever, you have this little gift from Alaska, which is really special.
Another way we did this was with an illustration of sockeye on the front of the box. Sockeye is a meaningful species; its history, its life, its spirituality, and its vitality are so important to our founder’s background and the livelihood of Alaska. Sockeye is this amazing fish that travels thousands of miles from where it was spawned and out to the ocean and then back to its natal rivers to re-spawn. It’s just incredible—the sockeye’s energy represents so much to Wild Alaskan. So we brought that onto the front of our box to celebrate it.
We also worked with a local Alaskan artist to do a beautiful map rendering of the state of Alaska on the inside of the box. Within this map, we identified key regions where Wild Alaskan sources seafood. When you look at this map, you can start to understand the different bodies of water where the fish you have in your box are from.
Read how
Wild Alaskan is keeping its sh frozen during shipping on p. 110.
Overall, the box feels almost like a love letter from Alaska. It has this really intimate, beautiful artwork that when a member brings it into their house, we want them to know they are connected to Alaska and to a wider community.
Were the typeface and logo redesigned as well?
Yes. Again, going back to the roots of Alaska, one thing that really stood out to us about lettering is that so much in Alaska is handmade. It’s very ad hoc and built with the resources you have. So we have this somewhat hand-cut lettering style that we adapted into a typeface, and that’s used throughout the packaging and logo. One thing that’s very notable when you go to Alaska and you’re hiking is that there are these trail signs hand carved out of wood. We were inspired by that. It’s really beautiful.
Have you received feedback from your members?
Overall, the packaging has been pretty well received. I think members feel the excitement of the packaging. We have a lot of photos of members with our packaging, just showcasing it in their homes. A lot of our members have experiences in Alaska, and the more we celebrate it on our packaging, the more we’re hearing from our members about those experiences. So people are telling us about their trips to Alaska— shing there and their time living there—and I can’t help but feel like the packaging has a little bit of a hand in that.
—Anne Marie Mohan
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quality of Yaskawa products is second to none, but Yaskawa Quality goes beyond that. It’s the total experience of purchasing Yaskawa products and working with people.
By Eric F. Greenberg, Attorney-at-law
Columnists are expected to make predictions when there’s a new President, so here are ve observations about packaging-related developments we’ll see from the new administration, and especially the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA):
1. Who can tell? It’s tough to tell exactly which of the new President’s promises will be incorporated into actual changes in regulations or law because often they are contradictory.
The new President promises wholesale cuts in regulations (as if fewer is always better than more) but also suggests aggressive new steps relating to what’s in Americans’ food, which certainly sounds plenty regulation-y.
That’s because Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes FDA. If RFK, Jr. is Senate-confirmed, expect to hear the phrase “Make America Healthy Again,” and imposition of a range of new requirements about microplastics, “chemicals” in food, “ultra-processed” foods, and vaccines, among other topics.
The inspiration for a lot of this appears to be a basic distrust of industry, something not ordinarily associated with the new President. In packaging, FDA’s GRAS program is one that NGOs and others have for years wanted to see eliminated or changed. It allows individual companies to conclude that their uses of substances in or in contact with food are Generally Recognized As Safe. We might hear louder complaints about the program in coming years, but any big changes require Congress to change the law.
2. Speeding up. FDA has seemed to accelerate decisions in the weeks between the election and the start of the new administration, perhaps anticipating many of their activities being abandoned or changed. In the food-contact packaging area, almost three dozen approvals for use of PFAS chemicals are withdrawn. (More on this soon.) In the food labeling realm, it revised regulation about when it’s OK to label a food as “healthy,” and proposed a significant new frontof-pack nutrition information requirement for most foods. (More on these to follow, too.)
In early January, FDA released new documents on topics as varied as food allergens, low-moisture ready-to-eat foods, labeling of plantbased foods, and limits for lead in processed food for babies.
Even before the November election, FDA had reorganized its oversight of food and set up new and different offices and departments in what it’s now calling its Human Foods Program. This was likely motivated by the infant formula contamination scandal in 2021-2022, which had led to lots of criticism of the agency’s slow response.
3. PFAS action. Several of FDA’s late-in-the-game actions affect packaging and labeling directly.
FDA withdrew approval for almost three dozen per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). It declared the clearances—all via Food Contact Notifications (FCNs) for their use as grease-proof coatings on paper-based food packaging—no longer effective because “the manufacturers or suppliers have ceased production, supply, or use” of them. This was a layup; the tough choices involve substances that are being used.
4. “Healthy” label claim and front-of-pack Nutrition Info. FDA’s new rule for when foods can claim to be “healthy” as a nutrientcontent label claim is a significant change from the longstanding rule.
FDA summarizes: “To qualify as ‘healthy’ under the updated definition, food products must contain a certain amount of a food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups outlined by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans including fruits, vegetables, protein foods, dairy, and grains. Foods that qualify for the ‘healthy’ claim must also meet certain limits on saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars. Under these changes, more foods that are key to healthy eating patterns will qualify for the ‘healthy’ claim, which could make them easier for consumers to identify when shopping. These foods include nuts and seeds, higher-fat fish such as salmon, olive oil, and water.”
And at press time, after years of considering various ideas, FDA proposed a front-of-pack nutrition info program.
It would require significant new design changes for most packaged foods, though the effective date would be three or four years from the final rule’s effectiveness date, depending on the size of businesses.
FDA proposes that the new label feature, called Nutrition Info, would appear on the front (principal display panel) and indicate if a serving of the food provides low, medium, or high levels of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars. Companies could also voluntarily add a calorie statement.
This would complement the existing Nutrition Facts panel on food labels. Comments are due by May 16, 2025.
5. More effective objections to agency actions. If industry wants to squawk about radical or illogical agency actions to come, it needs to recognize that the landscape for legal challenges has changed. For decades, if you objected to agency regulations or orders or other actions, you could sue in court to have them blocked by showing they are arbitrary or capricious or not in line with the facts or law. The Administrative Procedure Act still gives you that right, and it might be easier to win those challenges. Early in 2024, the Supreme Court declared that federal courts would not have to defer to the reasonable judgments of agencies when the courts are asked to evaluate the agencies’ interpretations of laws or regulations. That Supreme Court decision reversed the approach courts have taken for decades. One result of that decision is that agency regulations or orders or other actions might be struck down by courts more often in the future. PW
By Sterling Anthony, CPP, Contributing Editor
The most valuable assets for companies that market consumer packaged goods (CPGs) are their brands. A brand is composed of multiple components, including a name, symbols, warranties, perceptions, experiences, and expectations. In theory, packaging can be a brand-builder because it either communicates or shapes those components. To put theory into practice, packaging needs to be an integrated part of brand management, beginning at the concept stage and continuing throughout the life of the brand.
A company’s mission is its reason for existing. From it flows its goals. Achieving them is the purpose of the overall competitive strategy. Departmental strategies, in turn, need to collaborate in support of that overall competitive strategy. Given the unmatched value of brands and given packaging’s ability to build them, to think of one is to invoke the other.
The trade press does an excellent job in featuring companies that have used packaging to build brands. Such coverage seldom, if ever, details the underlying roadmap that the company followed. That’s understandable since strategies are inherently secretive. Inquiring minds are relegated to knowing the results, but not how they were achieved, in terms of starts-and-stops, progress-and-setbacks, etc. One’s learning curve, however, can be supplemented with fundamentals and best practices, applicable to specific stages in the life of a brand.
based on a product variable, whether flavor, size, strength, gender, age, physical form, or something else. The idea is to extend the brand’s positive associations across such varieties. That’s not to imply that line extension has to be stepwise. Some brands are launched with line extensions. Either way, the line needs to be tied together with a family look. Again, the tool is packaging, but it’s not always a matter of graphics. For example, variety in physical form can require different structural packaging (shapes, materials, etc.).
Another way that brands are leveraged is by brand extension, parlaying the brand into different product categories. Here, the limitation is one of elasticity, how far the brand can be stretched, or to what degree it can be a “rubber brand.” An example is Unilever’s female personal-care brand Dove (not to be confused with the ice cream products of the same brand name.) Despite retaining its name and logo, the brand was extended into the male personal care category, thanks in large part to battleship-grey packaging.
No one denies that time, effort, and resources need to be expended in decisions about the brand. But a wise brand manager knows that’s also true about its packaging.
First, there’s the brand launch. The associated product is supposed to satisfy a consumer need or want, yielding the owner an acceptable profit. Such implies that some market/consumer research has been performed. As a result, the brand-new brand should be simple to understand, relevant to the target consumer, and different (even if only by perception). Nothing else would make sense, given the risks and high failure rates associated with launches. A launch needs every assist available. And none is as versatile or impactful at the point-ofpurchase as packaging.
Over time, a brand acquires equity and an identity with consumers, the type and breadth of which reflects the brand’s standing within its category. But for a brand to be timeless, it must keep up with the times across generations of consumers. Again, packaging plays a role, exemplified by such slogans as, “New look, same stain-fighting power.” It’s not only a reassurance to loyal users but also a courting of new users. The facelift, therefore, needs to retain features recognized by the former while incorporating features attractive to the latter.
One way that brands are leveraged is by line extension, variety
Under a different scenario, Procter & Gamble’s Tide is a superbrand with iconic packaging, but would that combination work in an extension into the category of bar soap? It’s possible, but not certain, and contingent on a host of factors. A packaged product, by definition, has two components: product and package. Both components must be sufficient for the combination to be sufficient.
No one denies that time, effort, and resources need to be expended in decisions about the brand. But a wise brand manager knows that’s also true about its packaging. One the other hand, a brand manager who foregoes, for example, package design research methodologies, relying instead on personal evaluation, is missing the boat. Such misguidedness is less likely when top management has communicated its recognition and support of packaging as a brandbuilder. It’s even better when the commitment is reflected in how packaging, as a function, is positioned within the corporate hierarchy.
Rather than standalone assets, some brands are part of a stable of brands, across divisions or subsidiaries. Such situations benefit from centralization of the packaging function. Therein, communication channels can be used to share packaging-related information to the brands in need. This avoids reinventing the wheel, a savings to be appreciated under the pressures of speed-to-market.
As a concluding note, the leveraging of packaging as a brandbuilder is not entirely an in-house undertaking. It can involve the contributions of outsiders, such as designers, suppliers, and contractors, among others. A way of looking at it is that success requires that the right team be aboard the brand-wagon. PW
At nVenia, we know the power of a great company lies in its ability to delight their customers. That is our number one ĨŽĐƵƐ &ƌŽŵLJŽƵƌĮƌƐƚĐŽŶƐƵůƚĂƟŽŶƚŽƐƚĂƌƚ ƵƉ ǁĞǁŝůůďĞǁŝƚŚLJŽƵĞǀĞƌLJƐƚĞƉŽĨƚŚĞǁĂLJ KƵƌƉƌŽŵŝƐĞƚŽĚĞůŝǀĞƌ an excellent customer experience is built on:
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In this annual Q&A, AMERIPEN Policy and Membership Director Rob Keith and the association’s principle lobbyist, Andy Hackman of Serlin Haley, provide updates on current state and federal packaging policy along with insights on what to expect in the coming year.
What do you anticipate will be the major packaging policy issues for 2025?
As it relates to packaging, EPR [extended producer responsibility] will likely continue to be the most pressing policy concern to industry and lawmakers alike. To producers, the cost associated with EPR is likely to come more sharply into focus as we see funding formulas for states such as Oregon and Colorado released. This will likely in uence industry priorities around new EPR proposals.
We’ve seen EPR proposals incorporate many issues above and beyond funding. Lawmakers are likely to continue to approach EPR with a variety of goals and opportunities in mind. We expect to see other packaging issues, such as labeling mandates, recycled content goals, source reduction, and toxics provisions, rolled into EPR. Furthermore, fiscal deficits and funding issues in states are likely to spark bipartisan interest in any program that could relieve the state governments and local municipalities of financial burden.
In addition to their anticipated inclusion in EPR proposals, we believe labeling and PCR [post-consumer recycled] content mandates will continue to pop up as standalone legislation in states that may not be set to pass EPR.
Bans and restrictions on materials that are deemed “toxic” are likely to take center stage as well. PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances] in packaging will continue to be a flashpoint, but inclusion of more common packaging materials like PVC [polyvinyl chloride] and PVDC [polyvinylidene chloride]—both targeted in 2024 legislation in California—are likely to be hotly debated, with industry
playing the role of educator in terms of explaining what these materials do and why they play an important role in issues that span public health, food waste, and carbon footprint goals.
AMERIPEN has a great video (see pwgo.to/ 8647) that outlines the five packaging policies packaging professionals should know and tips for companies to get prepared.
What impact could the recent election have on packaging policy in 2025? Will we see similarly high activity, or will things slow down now that the election is over?
While the 2024 elections certainly presented a shift at the federal level, we anticipate steady and continued interest in and traction of packaging policy at the state level in the near future. Shifts in power from one party to another were less pronounced at the state level than they were federally and may not “make or break” any planned packaging legislation.
At the national level, we may see a shift in some of the burgeoning conversations around packaging policy that we’ve heard over the past few years. The incoming administration’s willingness, or reluctance, to work with or empower certain government agencies, such as the EPA, may dent the prospect of further hearings or legislation on packaging at the federal level.
A few states passed EPR studies in 2022 and 2024. What does this mean for EPR in 2025?
Legislation is not guaranteed, as there are many variables at play to take a bill into law. At AMERIPEN, we believe the choice by states to launch needs assessments ahead of potentially establishing full EPR programs at the outset represents prudent preparation and planning. This deliberative approach is slower than direct implementation but is likely to result in effective, credible,
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and sustainable outcomes if and when full EPR programs advance in those states. This approach also supports the creation of wellinformed, state-speci c programs rather than adoption of one-sizets-all models.
All of the states that passed EPR legislation required a needs assessment, so this approach to conduct one before passing legislation is simply a desire to get data upfront to help craft legislation specific to the states’ unique needs and programs.
As EPR kicks off in a few states this year, what big changes or insights should the industry consider as we move from rulemaking into implementation?
Keith:
2025 is the year that Oregon and Colorado are expected to begin implementation of EPR. July 1, 2025, is when both states begin the statutory obligations of their EPR programs, and fees are due. While we don’t yet have proposed fees, Oregon has required they are made public one month in advance (June).
It has taken nearly three years since the legislation was passed to implement them, as a lot of details were worked out during the rulemaking process. AMERIPEN and our members have dedicated significant time and resources, providing input into the regulatory processes for these laws. As we move toward implementation of the first two U.S. EPR laws, we believe these efforts will inform the regulatory process for the laws in Maine, Minnesota, California, and any future EPR laws.
The EPA recently published a plastic pollution strategy that calls for increased engagement in EPR. Does this mean federal EPR will likely become a focus?
Hackman:
While the uptick in federal interest in EPR in 2024 was an interesting development, and AMERIPEN testi ed before Senate on these issues, we believe the 2024 election, plus the retirement of U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, who had a keen interest in fostering a federal EPR conversation, as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, could mean that there could be less focus on federal EPR in 2025. While it’s unlikely that there will be actual progress on a federal EPR bill, it seems likely that EPR language may feature in larger, omnibus-style packaging legislation, albeit without much likelihood of gaining political traction.
AMERIPEN is a strong proponent of “evidence-informed” policy. What does that mean, and how does the organization use science and data to drive policy recommendations?
When AMERIPEN was launched over a decade ago, our founding members enshrined into our bylaws the expectation that any policy positions and advocacy work we do come from an informed position. Our members want us to offer proactive and data-driven solutions to policy rather than simply act from a defensive stance. Thus, much of our committee work is spent evaluating policy
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proposals, looking for best practices, and researching the science behind concerns. We frequently work with academics and fund peer-reviewed studies.
This approach is widely referred to as evidenced-based policymaking and is an objective of both our federal government as well as many European governments.
Not only do we want the data upfront so we can decide what policy interventions will help us reach our goals, but we also want to put measures in place at the outset of a program to help us assess the impact of legislation toward the policy’s stated goals. So, for example, if the goal of EPR is to improve the recycling and composting systems through increased funding and aligned packaging design, we want to ensure the incentives put in place have been proven effective in doing so in other locations, and we want to ensure we set up reporting and programmatic processes so we can evaluate success within a few years.
What advice do you offer to the packaging industry as we start 2025?
Continued engagement in ongoing legislative and regulatory processes at the state level continues to be vital. While ve states have full EPR programs in the works, there are dozens of other proposals and bills out there that will be introduced and reintroduced in 2025.
We should be prepared for things to move fast, starting in January, with many EPR proposals that weren’t passed in 2024 being introduced as well as new legislation in states where EPR hasn’t previously been an issue. Industry involvement and advocacy starting at the stakeholder process phase and continuing through the legislative and regulatory processes is still our best bet for ending up with EPR programs—and other packaging regulations—that are workable and fair and that will actually improve recycling systems. It’s up to packaging organizations like AMERIPEN to advocate for workable solutions such as shared responsibility and to effectively communicate why other provisions aren’t feasible. —Anne Marie Mohan
AMERIPEN, a material-neutral trade association for the packaging industry, is focused on the intersection of packaging policy and the environment and educates the industry on the value of packaging.
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By Anne Marie Mohan, Senior Editor
With its 2024 summer collection, Nestlé coffee brand Nespresso delved deep into the psychology of color to bring the essence of the nostalgic and glamourous 1970s of the Mediterranean Riviera to its limitededition iced-coffee capsule packaging and coffee accessories. So vital was color to the project that Nespresso called upon the Pantone Color Institute for their expertise in color trends and emotional resonance.
Nespresso and Pantone’s collaboration officially kicked off at Nespresso’s headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, where the two came together to conduct trend research and creative exploration. The challenge was to craft a visual narrative that could transport consumers to a sun-drenched paradise, even if only in their imagination. This required a meticulous selection of colors that could evoke the desired emotions and memories associated with the Mediterranean.
Recalls Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute, “When we met for the initial Color Workshop … it was the Futurestalgia theme that seemed to have this universal gravitational pull for both our teams.”
Futurestalgia, Pressman explains, is a trend that highlights our sentimental yearning to return to, or experience, a previous era that we have never lived in but wished we could have, or a previous time in our lives that brought us tremendous feelings of enjoyment. “Diving into this different time period provides us with escapism in the everyday,” she adds. “Reliving lighter, easier times of the past connects us to feelings of comfort as we long for stability and seek optimism for the future. The feeling of Futurestalgia was ideally suited to Nespresso’s desire to create a theme of an Unforgettable Mediterranean Summer for its summer campaign.”
Pivotal was the selection of a bold and vibrant hero color that would provide visual engagement and a visceral excitement and would bring the seasonal collection to life. According to Soraya Saab, global brand identity and artistic director for Nespresso, the team originally considered blue as the “hero color,” but after some
consideration, selected orange instead. “It was important to have a warm color that could bring this kind of solar feeling, a sense of positive energy,” she says. “I think secretly we all knew Mandarin Orange was the winning star of this campaign.”
The result of the collaboration was a color palette centered around Mandarin Orange, a hue that Pressman describes as “gregarious and fun-loving, luminous, and hot.” She adds, “Mandarin Orange ignites our desire for summer fun and spontaneous adventure.”
Surrounding the hero color were complementary shades that reflected the rich diversity of scenery and scents of the Mediterranean coast. Among them were a sunny Habenero Gold, fruity Muskmelon, captivating Blue Iolite, refreshing Aquarelle, and inviting Tofu.
The color palette was implemented across the collection’s limitededition products and accessories, including coffee machines, frothers, and coasters in Mandarin Orange, travel mugs in Aquarelle, and a new limited-edition iced-coffee blend, Sunny Almond Vanilla Over Ice, in Habenero Gold packaging.
Said Saab upon the selection of the campaign colors, “The palette that Pantone and Nespresso created together truly captures the spirit of an unforgettable Mediterranean summer. Color is a language; it’s a mode of expression. Color trends reflect that mode of expression— what we’re looking for, what we’re aspiring to, our lifestyles. This [palette] is vibrant, it’s energizing. Orange is a socializing color. This is about capturing people’s attention. This is about feeling good.”
Beyond the aesthetic appeal, the collaboration also addressed practical considerations in product design and development. The integration of these colors required careful coordination with manufacturing processes to ensure that the vibrant hues were accurately rendered on various materials. This involved close communication between Nespresso’s creative team and its production counterparts, ensuring that the final products met both aesthetic and functional standards.
The Unforgettable Summer Collection included eight coffee capsule varieties, along with coffee machines and accessories, all of which were available for a limited time beginning in mid-May 2024. PW
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Cans are still growing over bottles, glass is gaining over plastic bottles. Are these shifts proactive responses to upcoming EPR laws? Our data reveals the emerging trends in packaging material.
At Rockwell’s Automation Fair, you couldn’t swing a PLC from an ethernet cable without hitting an example of automation with freshly integrated small language model or optical AI. Real world use cases from the likes of Unilever and Danone are defining what AI’s role will be in packaging automation.
By Matt Reynolds, Chief Editor
Ever since Open AI debuted its ChatGPT large language model (LLM) in November 2022, consumers have been struggling to imagine how and when AI would impact their lives. For the public, a disparate array of chatbots, AI assistants, Google searches, surreal social media images, and even articles about term paper plagiarism sparsely de ne a vague and discordant AI landscape.
In industrial automation circles, the opposite is true. At the November 2024 Rockwell Automation Fair in Anaheim, exactly two years after ChatGPT launched, AI’s impacts are concrete, focused, and accelerating. Their narrower, more task-speci c design for certain areas of industrial automation—packaging automation for example—have meant that real-world, in-market applications are proliferating. Plus, as a subset of the public, CPGs are eager to adopt AI into their systems, especially generative, small language model (SLM) AI, and optical AI applications.
(both human safety and food safety). So, CPGs showed up in Anaheim seeking next-generation automation and digital transformation solutions to enable operational exibility to improve yield/quality, ef ciency, and resilience. AI has solutions that impact all of these categories.
Brand owners and CPGs aren’t hungry for AI because it’s cool, it’s an entirely practical desire. They need to nd ways to navigate a tight workforce landscape and drive growth using digitally enabled solutions— increasingly backed by AI—that integrate across the value chain, and from the edge to the cloud. The industry is forecasting continued growth due to a rising middle class, workforce constraints, tech advancements including AI, and changing consumer preferences for variety, sustainability, and speed. Food, beverage, and CPG tend to be highly competitive, labor-intensive segments, with a strong focus on quality and safety
Resilience is particularly important in an era of uncertainty and headwinds like rising costs, in ation, and declining population rates— especially in big markets like China. Consumer fragmentation persists as purchases are now made across a wide variety of channels, including in-person, online, and via digital platforms. From a retail standpoint, brand owners feel increased competitive pressure from private label products as well as new global competitors. And through the foodservice lens, the away-fromhome sector continues to slowly take share from at-home retail purchases, re ecting consumers’ desire for quick, on-the-go offerings. While some consumers are shifting to value-based products due to economic worries, there is also strong demand for differentiated, authentic, and premium products. To win over these consumers, many companies are looking to drive growth through high-value new product introductions, healthier ingredient reformulations, and packaging differentiation.
Meanwhile, Rockwell says it’s seeing its food, beverage, and CPG customers reinvest to modernize aging equipment installed bases, and address workforce challenges with exible, integrated, and scalable dataenabled solutions that, once again, now tend to carry with them two extra letters: AI. With limited workforce availability, high-speed operations, and vast amounts of data to analyze, Rockwell is embedding generative, SLM AI and machine learning capabilities directly into its products. And brand owners have already been putting those products to work. PW
For food-producing brands, maintaining precision in ll levels is crucial for both product quality and cost ef ciency. On its 320 to 350 jar/min Hellmann’s mayonnaise packaging line, Unilever’s Pouso Alegre food and nutrition facility outside of São Paulo, Brazil, faced challenges with its traditional PID (proportional integral derivative) loop system, which relied on feedback from downstream checkweighers to adjust ll levels. This reactive approach sometimes led to over lling, increasing material costs and reducing overall ef ciency, according to Jean Ramos, digital factory coordinator, and Denis Castro de Almeida, digital factory coordinator, Latin America, both of Unilever.
The ideal weight was 500 g, but the scrap window was already narrow—499 g for under lls, and 508 g for over ll scrap. How could Unilever tighten the standard deviation and move the average ll closer to the 500-g ideal weight, without losing scrap to under ll?
At Rockwell’s Automation Fair, Ramos and Catro de Almeida explained that they turned to Rockwell’s FactoryTalk LogixAI Perfect Fill, a new solution designed to predict ll amounts using what could be called, “a soft sensor approach, so think of it as software as a sensor,” said Richard Resseguie, product manager for Rockwell’s LogixAI. “The whole theory behind this is, what if we can develop a soft sensor that’s going to predict what the ll amount is going to be in the jar, before you actually go and ll it, based on the process variables?”
The implementation of LogixAI involved integrating data from various stages of production, including upstream ltering and mixing processes as well as the lling itself. This data was used to train a predic-
Unilever’s Pouso Alegre food and nutrition facility faced challenges with its traditional PID loop system.
tive model that could anticipate the expected dosed weight, to a high degree of precision, based on those upstream variables.
“We’re doing this directly on the edge right next to the equipment. That’s how we’re gathering the data, how we’re training the model, and then how we’re adjusting to improve it,” Resseguie added.
This edge-based approach allowed the company to analyze and predict potential drifts in equipment performance over time, enabling real-time adjustments at the edge. The predictive model was trained us-
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ing both historical and live data, which helped in exploring the feature space and determining the relationship between input variables and the desired ll level. “Once we determine which variables are contributing to this use case, we use that prediction for the next jar and then determine, okay, you’re about to over ll by, let’s say three or four grams. We can make that adjustment and reduce it,” Resseguie said. By reducing the standard deviation of ll amounts across different
The standard deviation window before (left) and after (right) implementing LogixAI Perfect Fill prove that the soft sensor approach works.
Instead of relying on downstream sensors that reactively measure ll levels, this system measures upstream variables to make predictions.
ller heads, the company was able to operate closer to the target set point, signi cantly minimizing waste. Notably, Ramos and Castro de Almeida had determined that all of the ll head nozzles were performing ef ciently and comparably before upstream inputs were selected, thus controlling the ller heads themselves as variables. The process involved selecting key input variables through a correlation matrix and using them to train the model. The representative described the process: “You can drag and drop and select those inputs and then, from there, you train the model.”
The integration of LogixAI into the company’s existing systems was
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facilitated by its compatibility with Rockwell’s Studio 5000 and ladder logic, allowing for seamless control and automation at the control layer.
“You actually have variables that control when you train and when you calculate. So that’s what allows you to truly automate this entire process at the control layer,” Resseguie said.
Ramos and Castro de Almeida’s work ow for this application was as follows. They rst identi ed the variable of interest—the target dosed weight. The next questions was, ‘what are the input variables that im-
pact that outcome, thus can help us predict what it will be?’ That can be a slippery question to answer because there can be thousands of variables that can be produced as data tags in the PLC.
“So work that was done beforehand that at least helped us narrow down the scope of the data by doing that correlation matrix, helping us at least identify what are some of the top key variables that we want to utilize,” Resseguie said.
Unilever reduced nished goods over ll giveaway on the line by 50%. When extrapolating across millions of packages this drives signicant savings and margin improvement.
The project is indicative of Rockwell’s recent practice of combining traditional soft sensing technology with AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze multiple input variables in real-time to make ll weight predictions to optimize ll accuracy. These insights are directly integrated back to a Logix controller to actuate and execute adjustments in real time. On the show oor, a technical demo built on new FT Optix HMI/SCADA/IoT software demonstrated LogixAI Perfect Fill impact on ll accuracy by toggling functionality on and off.
Rockwell says there are dozens of similar, high-value AI applications just like this across its CPG customer’s facilities. But insight alone won’t drive savings; that’s where control systems come into play. Controllers are integral as they execute AI and machine learning commands to equipment, generate more than 100 GB of data per year, and enable-highspeed closed-loop control. Insights are great, stakeholders say, but you have to have that hardware ability to execute on them. —Matt Reynolds
Danone automation managers Jerel Williams and Juan Lua used a stage at Automation Fair to explore how their favorite factory automation data management tool, Rockwell’s FactoryTalk AssetCentre, might bene t even further from an AI integration. It’s a centralized tool used for securing, managing, versioning, tracking, and reporting automation-related asset information across an entire facility, and potentially, across an enterprise. As such, the contents of a brand like Danone’s private AssetCentre platform could be seen as a discrete set of data and text on which a small language model (SLM) AI could be trained. Another possibility, aside from using an SLM, would be to use an AI chatbot that exclusively learns from manuals, illustrations, videos, and other resources provided by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of packaging machinery, plus any other documentation. This method, known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), involves guiding generative AI to retrieve information only from meticulously selected sources and
Danone automation managers Jerel Williams (left) and Juan Lua (speaking) explore the possibilities of AI integration in Rockwell’s FactoryTalk AssetCentre factory automation data management tool.
documentation, rather than relying on generic pre-existing data or information available on the internet. Of course, the output is only as good as the accuracy of the input.
At the Fair, it sounded like AssetCentre may be next in line to get this kind of SLM AI boost, and Danone engineers certainly see the potential bene t.
Today, Danone uses AssetCentre (version 15.00.00) for all its revision tracking, technical document libraries, PLC backups, and disaster recovery assets. That’s a sizable, but nite and discrete set of data on which an AI can train, learn, then instruct operators. The company has implemented AssetCentre across all its sites in North America and is trying to extend that to its other sites elsewhere, meaning the potential AI could span the enterprise, in theory.
“It’s a good repository for data and logging information. If you’re
working on one packaging line and there’s some machine where you need some documents that you’ve stowed away, you don’t have to dig through le systems,” said Williams.
Danone also uses it in security and auditing. Williams and Lua can go back to auto logs, check to see who made changes, and nd out when they made them. If packaging equipment is malfunctioning, the company has visibility of the people who made changes at a certain point, down to the speci c item and eld that they changed.
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“For us, AssetCentre is the central hub for all our operations. Anytime we have a vendor or a technician that goes into our facility or they’re going to work on a system, AssetCentre is the rst place that they go. That is where all our electrical drawing reside. That is where our network architecture for the facility resides. If they’re trying to identify, for instance, what servers communicate with these systems, that information is there. It’s the source of truth for our facility. And if you’re trying to nd information, that’s where you would start. If you’re trying to see someone working on something, AssetCentre’s typically the starting point for us,” Williams said.
Danone’s packaging machinery projects are unending, and different vendors are constantly interacting with its PLCs. That’s where AssetCentre shines, according to the Danone engineers.
“Sometimes the operations team brings in a vendor for support, but they may not necessarily communicate some of those changes with the engineering team,” Lua said. “With AssetCentre, we control the backups. We know exactly who’s in our PLCs, and who’s making changes. It gives us that that feedback whenever we’re auditing our systems, and we’re trying to nd out why there’s something going on with a case packer, for example. It gives us that initial check to see who was working on it, so we can say, ‘let’s follow up with that person and see what they were working on speci cally and why.’”
Rockwell has identi ed AssetCentre as having huge potential to feed and train autonomous, AI-enabled systems—it could act as a source of context and data for AI agents to consume, integrate, and respond.
“When you think about these large language models that are becoming popular, and the types of applications that they start to enable, they’re built and trained with very large sets of data,” added Jon Mills of Rockwell. “This allows them to operate in many domains, many of which we’re taking advantage of in industrial automation. But for them to be effective, they need access to the information to be able to perform some sort of function on, so having centralized solutions like AssetCentre that are organizing and contextualizing the data, those are going to be primary inputs for the future of AI within these networks and systems.”
“I could imagine asking an AI, integrated within AssetCentre, ‘where’s my highest risk controller?’” said Williams. “Or asking it, ‘what’s my oldest stuff—where’s the obsolescence?’ The potential’s there since we have all information in place, as long as it uses the data effectively.”
Williams thinks he would use it, too, if it were available. “With some other Rockwell technologies like the Copilot in Design Studio [see page 60], if you’re troubleshooting an issue somebody else was working on, you can ask it, ‘where did the last person leave off?” he said. “Where are the most changes, what program is this in? Just that time savings alone and getting back to production is worth it.
“We use AssetCentre quite extensively, and a lot of these [soon-to-come] features that we’ve discussed are ones that are making using AssetCentre even simpler and quicker,” Williams said. “Right now, our network architecture drawings are manually created. We want to have these up to date and have the drawing for our vendors or for troubleshooting, or just for reference. If we can tie this into IAB [Integrated Architecture Builder, a Rockwell tool] and have them auto update for us, that would save time, as well as audits for security and things like that. If there was some way to use AI to say, ‘what PLCs have been unlocked and why?’ I could use something like that to quickly get a response, so we can quickly tackle those.”
Added Lua, “Troubleshooting, too. I’m thinking about anomalies and being able to query them as symptoms of a problem. AI can make that connection quickly. I’m sure not everybody’s reading through notes on anomalies every day. So as unfamiliar issues come up, AI could give you that solution faster.” —Matt Reynolds
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Announced at press time for this issue and first revealed at the recent SPS exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, B&R unveiled an AI-onboard update to its suite of engineering and runtime software. The company says that its new Automation Studio Code incorporates an array of advanced editing functions that are integrated into the new environment. But most relevant to this space is Automation Studio Copilot, a generative AI coding assistant developed in cooperation with Microsoft
“With a productivity boost from modern development tools and generative AI, together with the flexibility of cloud collaboration, we help them develop faster with more agile teamwork and get innovative machines to market fast,” says B&R chief technology officer Florian Schneeberger.
Automation Studio Copilot is an AI companion embedded in the new coding environment. Copilot allows developers to generate executable machine code simply by entering prompts in natural language, the company says. B&R adds that the Copilot also helps optimize and annotate existing code, making it easier to share and reuse, and complex applications can be quickly summarized to facilitate discussions with non-technical stakeholders.
Describing what typical project workflow might look like, Software Strategy Manager Manuel SanchezMarchan says: “You might start by setting up a project in the familiar, feature-rich Automation Studio environment. Then you can jump over to Automation Studio Code to develop your application and share it with your team—using all the modern editing features and enjoying all the advantages of cloud collaboration and seamless source control. Every step of the way, you have Automation Studio Copilot at your side— whether you get stuck on a tricky problem or just want a faster way to get things done.” —Matt Reynolds
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Personal care packaged goods manufacturers with diverse product lines and high production volumes—Unilever’s Dove brand for example, as demonstrated on the Automation Fair oor—often struggle to ef ciently identify and address defects or anomalies. This leads to increased waste and operational inef ciencies. Existing automated vision systems do a good job at spotting and rejecting defects, but they often fail to identify root causes. And such systems certainly don’t prescribe or automatically take appropriate action to address those root causes.
Optical AI enables prescriptive action based on the defect. A label scratch might result in a simple reject, but an open cap may require more careful handling to avoid making a mess.
That’s why CPGs at Automation Fair took notice of Rockwell’s new VisionAI, an AI-driven quality inspection platform released in September. Rockwell said integrates seamlessly with existing automation systems, allowing for real-time defect detection and automated corrective actions. It’s a software, not a hardware, so no new cameras are required. VisionAI implementation involves deploying those legacy cameras, or a new camera array depending on the operation, to inspect products from multiple angles. Inspection data is then given to AI to identify, categorize, and automatically act according to the defect category.
“We’re really trying to get away from just good vs. bad. We want to get into root cause analysis and classi cation of the anomalies we have in the system. And we want to give our teams the ability to make decisions based on the types of anomalies, and even to
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automate multiple different prescribed corrective actions based on the category of the anomaly,” said Nicholas Putnam, business development manager at Rockwell.
Demonstrating the concept in the booth, a dozen or so Dove shampoo bottles with a range of different defects—folded labels, missing caps, physical scuffs—underwent vision inspection on the system.
Consider anomalies like scratched labels or missing bar codes. In those defect categories, the immediate action might be to re a solenoid armature on the conveyor to kick bad product off the line. But if it were a defect in another category, like a missing bottle cap on a lled bottle, that solenoid re would cause a mess of spilled shampoo that would require cleanup and possible downtime.
Using this approach gives brands the ability to take a more prescriptive approach to how to handle anomalies from different categories. It also gives teams of operators, perhaps using a Pareto chart, the ability to identify the most common or most disruptive anomalies, and act accordingly to rectify them to have the biggest and fastest positive impact.
“All of that is good, but better than that would to have never made the bad package in the rst place,” Putnam added. “So, we integrate with the control layer, and through the I/O, we’re capturing quality inspection inside of the controller, as well as in a cloud-based architecture, so we can make that data available at scale locally, or we can make it available across lines, plants, or the whole enterprise. If we have a
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speci c plant or line that’s producing one type of anomaly more often than others, we can get to root cause, and then enable other facilities to avoid repeating the same problems.”
In every application, VisionAI trains the model on what a good,
When we train the model on what a good package looks like, the system then starts to look for anything that deviates from that, identify it, and tag it as an anomaly. Once identi ed, we then tag it in the system or classify it.
shelf-ready package looks like, rather than trying to train to the innumerable defects that could exist.
“We train a model in the cloud, and that gives us the ability to deploy that to one or many devices that are going to be looking for similar quality inspection points,” Putnam said. “When we train the model on what a good package looks like, the system then starts to look for anything that deviates from that, identify it, and tag it as an anomaly. Once identi ed, we then tag it in the system or classify it. Instead of having your team try to think of all the things that could go wrong, let’s just train it on what’s good and rely on the system to identify the bad.”
Classifying the anomaly then lets an operator decide how to respond. Eventually, that response can become an automatic, controlbased, prescriptive action.
Consider the example of the mess-making missing bottle cap defect, as opposed to more cosmetic defects like scuffs. Once the missing cap anomaly is detected, it will get saved and become visible to the quality management team. If the quality management team agrees with whatever decision the on- oor operator makes on how to address the issue—for instance, to stop the line and manually remove the defect bottle, instead of deploying a solenoid that might splash shampoo all
over the line—then the quality management team can then update and redeploy the model. Going forward, the missing cap will have a classi cation in the system, and a speci c prescriptive action can be taken either by operators, or by further automation.
“After some time, you start to see across lines, across batches, and even across other systems, and you’re able do some root cause analysis,” Putnam added. “For instance, in the case of a damaged label, that was something the AI identi ed as deviating from good, an operator then tagged it as a damaged label, the enterprise quality management team agreed with that assessment, and then updated the model and pushed it back down to the edge device where the model runs locally, and now we can start tracking that as one of the classi cations of anomalies.” Maybe the next action is taken upstream at the labeler? And maybe it’s automated instead of performed by an operator?
The system also allows for trend analysis. Say a facility is used to getting one or two label anomalies per batch run or per shift, but that spikes to ve in a row, back-to-back. A brand’s quality team can program in safeguards to swiftly react when something like this happens, instead of making another 500 products with bad labels before the system stops to look for a root cause.
—Matt Reynolds
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Rockwell expanded its FactoryTalk Design Studio software-as-a-service design software with a new generative AI Copilot, developed in partnership with Microsoft. The latest feature, powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, enables controls engineers to use natural language prompts for tasks like product guidance, code and ladder logic generation, code and ladder logic explanations, and troubleshooting, making system-design faster and more intuitive. Accessible through a web browser without downloads or installations, FactoryTalk Design Studio with AI Copilot provides a collaborative, multi-user environment with integrated version control and is continuously updated with new capabilities to enhance productivity and ef ciency in industrial automation system design.
operator can then work with the AI to continue to interact, re ne, and add smart objects to get to a speci ed packaging process.
“Think about the proliferation of large language AI models like ChatGPT and the like. What if CPGs can now make use of natural language prompts to accelerate the process of building ladder logic as a controls engineer? That’s what Design Studio Copilot is trying to achieve,” said Chris Barnes at PACK EXPO International, two weeks before Automation Fair. “Think about the workforce issues companies face and think about new people having to rapidly come up to speed with what the
code base is all about. And then think about them writing the code and optimizing a code base. It’s really a step change in the way controls engineers can do their day-to-day tasks.”
An engineer can directly ask the AI Copilot, ‘Can you develop a pattern, and write ladder logic for me, and input certain parameters around a given process, like lling or cartoning or case packing? The
“The way you set up a Design Studio project is you have a Smart Object that is a container of programs or routines. You have a program underneath it, and then you have a routine where the code actually lives,” said Tony Carrara, business manager at Rockwell during an Automation Fair demo of the tech. “We do that to drive reusability of content. I can build a Smart Object—a container of code— and then I can use it again and again in different places. Copilot lets me use a natural language prompt to create that structure. For instance, if I want to create a Smart Object for a temperature control routine on a process, I can simply tell the Copilot, ‘Create temperature control to monitor temperature across ve tanks.’ … The technology that Design Studio was built on allows us to have that integrated chat panel so a controls engineer is not switching off to another app, they’re not searching the internet, they can really stay in the ow their work. And another paradigm with Design Studio is that after you write the code, you can allocate it to a controller. I can build my system out and model it, and then I can pick my execution surfaces (PLCs) that I want to deploy it to. In this case, I can use the AI chat panel to say, ‘Allocate the new code that I just made to a certain control Logix.’ Just using that natural language prompt, the code will be added to the default task of the desired controller.”
Rockwell’s Microsoft collaboration will also introduce Rockwell’s FactoryTalk Optix Food & Beverage model, enabled through Rockwell’s digital and service offerings, into the Microsoft AI model catalog. The model brings generative AI directly to the edge of an automated packaging line that uses it. The adapted AI model, using Microsoft’s Phi-3 small language models (SLM), will provide packaging machine operators with AI-guided instructions, assisting in process and device operations via the familiar FactoryTalk Optix interface. With speci cally trained models, operators at the edge can access contextualized AI guidance to enhance productivity, reduce errors, and accelerate decision-making. —Matt Reynolds
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Elsewhere in the packaging universe, namely PACK EXPO International in Chicago and PMMI’s Annual Meeting, in Hershey, Pa., other automation and controls suppliers also are diving into the deep end of generative AI. Schneider Electric and Siemens, respectively, used these recent major packaging events to demonstrate their own generative AI capability, built directly into their software suite for programming those vendors’ PLCs.
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At the PMMI Annual Meeting, Schneider Electric’s John Partin demonstrated how one might go about interacting with the tool to write code for a liquid lling application for olive oil to prevent sloshing during the ll (screenshot below). The programmer can type into a chat box in plain language about encountering sloshing during the ll at a certain speed and ask it to suggest code that would prevent the undesired behavior. The AI chatbot rst asked clarifying questions about the application. After some simple back-and-forth, the AI generated structured text in a pasteboard area on the screen. It also automatically inserts comments in the code for easier understanding. From that staging area, one can simply copy and paste into the actual code tree on the same screen.
While Partin said that the AI tool is speci cally trained on Schneider Electric’s entire library of code, he admitted that right now the tool is limited to the more basic machine handling and isn’t yet ready for advance control functions such as servo motion control or robotic control. But still, it has the potential to save hours of valuable electrical engineering time.
To take advantage of generative AI, Schneider Electric set up an AI team last year, and the company’s VP of AI strategy, Juergen Weichenberger, gave a demonstration of this functionality at PACK EXPO to a capacity crowd. Weichenberger said that they engineered the system so that the same code results from different prompts, eliminating variability, important for maintainability. Weichenberger did show a robotics example for a pharmaceutical application, but it was unclear whether that represented a new development over what Partin stated in September.
Weichenberger took questions, one about whether the system mitigates the propagation of bad code. He explained that all code goes into a simulator rst to ush out any unintended consequences. He also alluded to something called the Intent Engine, which checks the intent of the code that is generated by the system.
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Currently Schneider Electric is utilizing Open AI for its underlying model, but Weichenberger admitted that it was costly and that the company was investigating other models, including small language models (SLMs) which are designed to run locally, bypassing the need to pay for cloudbased compute time. “It needs to run on the controller” said Weichenberger. “It can’t run in a data center somewhere.”
The new functionality was expected to launch in the months after PACK EXPO but a detailed timeframe wasn’t released.
Siemens developed its own AI assistant called Industrial Copilot that similarly allows the generation of code, either in the format of function blocks or structured text. At PMMI’s Annual Meeting, Siemens’s Dominic Trinko gave a demonstration where he indicated that the tool is also capable of generating HMI screens. Trinko explained how there is a way to test the code, including the ability to test the code’s performance on a digital twin of the machine.
Trinko also explained how Siemens Industrial Copilot can act as an internal knowledge expert for the service department. OEMs can load all of their machine manuals, documentation related to all of the components and subsystems into the system which incorporates a large language model. Then when a question is received from a customer about, say, a particular fault code on a particular machine, a service tech can type in the question using natural language, and the system will return an answer, sparing the tech of combing through those manuals and documents (screenshot below).
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Finally, Trinko touched on the ability to automatically and seamlessly roll out to customers everything from code updates to bug xes—even new HMI screens.
At PACK EXPO International in Chicago in November, Siemens’s Bernd Raithel, director of Factory Automation presented more details on Copilot and on the company’s AI strategy. Most of the presentation focused on Copilot for engineering, where the user asks for functionality in plain language and the system outputs code for the PLC, as described in this article. Raithel said that PLC code can be created by copying process steps out of a static PDF process description document. PLC programmers still need to ll in the gaps, he said, but it’s faster than starting from scratch and allows engineering departments to react more quickly to new requirements. Copilot also works for programming and creating HMI screens.
Because the system is integrated into the company’s platform, it allows users to interact with and ask questions of the company’s documentation using chat, allowing users to get at the right answer more quickly.
Siemens Industrial Copilot for Engineering is available for download now through the Sie-
mens Marketplace. There is an extra cost associated with the functionality.
Raithel announced a broader vision for Copilot functionality beyond engineering (screenshot at right). One example he cited was for optimization of machine parts and components. Another was what he called Industial Copilot for Operations, which can collect data from machine operation, and combine it with information drawn from manuals from the machine as well as major machine components. This paves the way for predictive maintenance capability, as well as root cause analysis. This can be especially useful for newer operators or technicians. For example, an operator can ask why the machine might be slowing down.)
The data collection component is designed to sit on top of an existing system. Though there is a separate charge for Copilot for Operations, the company is integrating generative AI into its Senseye application for
predictive maintenance at no additional charge, according to Raithel. He said that generative AI functionality was also coming to its digital twin product, and to its product line more generally across the industrial engineering and operations value chain. —Dave Newcorn
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With Beckhoff’s TwinCAT Chat, large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT from OpenAI can conveniently be used in the TwinCAT XAE engineering environment to develop projects. Efficiency potential can thus be exploited, from control programming to corporate management. Beckhoff first began demonstrating the capability at PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2023 among other automation events.
Large language models offer several benefits for both automation engineers and enterprise management, the company says. For automation engineers, LLMs can automatically generate and complete code, speeding up the entire process. These LLMs can also create personal tutorials and specifically ask for solutions to problems that arise. From an enterprise management perspective, LLMs promote knowledge transfer within the organization. They can act as a central knowledge base, storing valuable information and making it available when needed. In addition, LLMs can relieve the pressure on the support team by serving as the first point of contact for customer inquiries.
TwinCAT Chat was developed to deeply integrate LLMs into control engineering, giving users a clear benefit when compared to using ChatGPT traditionally in a web browser, for example. This simplifies the development process, as communication and code exchange are seamlessly integrated. Also, the basic initialization of the LLM has been tailored specifically to TwinCAT requests. A programmer can thus ask specific questions directly, without telling the LLM that it’s in reference TwinCAT first, and that the code examples are expected in structured text. Also, Beckhoff adds, the generated code can easily be transferred, which not only saves developers time but also prevents the errors that occur when transferring code manually. For efficient interaction with TwinCAT Chat, one-click pre-tested requests can be used that are specifically designed to improve the user’s workflow.
Other recent development work includes automated creation of TwinCAT HMI controls and a chatbot interface to the extensive Beckhoff documentation system. —Matt Reynolds
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New research from PMMI Media Group shows an appetite among CPGs for changing the way operators and technicians interact with machines on the plant floor. Is it time for packaging and processing equipment to come with a ChatGPT-style interface?
By Dave Newcorn, President, PMMI Media Group
It’s no secret that CPGs are suffering from a workforce problem. Flip to page 100 for more from our Annual Outlook Report, but the short version is about 80% of Packaging World readers are having trouble nding and retaining packaging line labor. It’s hard to nd operators and technicians, and costs associated with training them becomes burdensome with high turnover that is increasingly common in the industry.
Can AI help? As Matt Reynolds mentioned at the outset of this wider AI Special Report, ChatGPT burst upon the scene two years ago, seemingly overnight, taking all of us by surprise. In truth, literally decades of efforts in AI predated the breakthrough.
But now that we’ve all had a chance to experience generative AI in the form of a chatbot, aws and all, it’s not hard to see where this is headed. Just glancing over the preceding 30 pages should indicate that some of what’s possible is no longer nascent; it’s already being implemented in select cases. But what if all operators and technicians could chat with their machines directly?
Whether that means getting the right answers for a changeover procedure or trouble-shooting a root cause of downtime, a naturallanguage interaction with the equipment could be more intuitive than operating an HMI. That could reduce the burden of skill required to operate and maintain the machine using today’s HMIs. And that’s where AI could become a useful answer for the workforce issues that CPGs and food processors are experiencing.
At a PMMI event last year, Danone’s Director of Innovation & Packaging Engineering Shawn French asked the audience, “Do you remember your iPhone training?” It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that the groundbreaking user interface, which today we all take for granted, was so intuitive at the time that no training was needed to operate what is essentially a highly sophisticated, pocket-size computer with a novel interface.
It’s true that packaging machines are not cell phones; with technical data, warnings, or parameters that are dif cult to simplify, along with diverse, complex operational states, safety considerations, and even regulatory constraints, HMIs are necessarily more complex than a phone and require skill to operate. Nor are we suggesting that HMIs will go away.
But what if AI-powered chat were built into every machine? Could that help simplify operation and address the worker quality and quantity problem?
We put the question to readers like you, who work at CPGs. The survey
Do you agree with the premise that AI chat would open up a new avenue for operators and technicians to interact with the machine in a way that would lead to more uptime?
What if the AI chat on the machine could respond with links to short videos based on the question being answered, e.g., how to do this or that on the machine?
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What if the AI chat could operate in multiple languages? (e.g., English, Spanish, Polish, etc.)
Not necessary for us
Nice to have but not a top priority
this would be very helpful
Would it be useful if operators and technicians could use “push-to-talk” functionality to speak their question to the machine (or to a phone or tablet), instead of typing out the question on a keyboard?
AI chat not needed at all, with or without voice inputs
No, typing is good enough
Nice to have but not a top priority
this would be very helpful
was conducted via email to Packaging World’s CPG and brand owner audience in December 2024 and re ects the views of 95 total respondents.
As the charts show, most respondents indicated a high degree of interest in integrating AI chat into packaging and processing equipment (see top chart, page 70). As one respondent wrote, “Anything that creates a venue for maintenance or operators to get quick ‘how-to’ answers is a no-brainer.”
Another wrote, “Using an AI chat that was fully capable of accessing the equipment manuals and repair/setup aspects could be much easier and faster than searching either on paper on even electronically.”
Others have started to use AI elsewhere and concur on the potential: “We are nding AI helpful in so many areas now. Writing job postings, communicating with employees in different languages. It would be helpful to get immediate answers to the issues we face during production.” 2025 Half Page Horizontal.pdf 1 1/9/25 9:49 AM
When it comes to generative AI chatbots that we’ve all tried online, sometimes the answers provided are flat-out wrong, even as they are wrapped in self-assured language. Particularly notable in the early days of AI chat, this effect is charmingly referred to by experts as a “hallucination.” The rest of us would call it “Making #### up.” There are many reasons why this is, and the AI companies are working hard to reduce this. (And many believe that the problem has gotten better since ChatGPT 3.5 was released two years ago.)
However, the most significant way to greatly reduce risk associated with providing incorrect answers is by training AI chatbot only on manuals, drawings, videos and other material directly from the manufacturer. This technique is known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which is where generative AI is directed to pull information exclusively from carefully curated sources and documentation rather than relying on generic pre-trained data or web knowledge. This approach greatly reduces the risk of hallucinations, as the AI generates answers based only on the trusted sources it’s given. And can be explicitly instructed to say “I don’t know” in cases where it’s less than 100%, or some other specified threshold percentage, confident in its answer.
Obviously, the answers are only as good as the data that’s fed in. If machine manuals aren’t up to date, or aren’t in digital form, that needs to be addressed first. Also, plants may have SOPs that vary from what the OEM specifies (and those SOPs may vary from plant to plant). All such variations would need to be either accounted for or standardized before being fed into the model. (This also means putting into place a serious process in place to ensure that manuals, SOPs, and other documents are up to date at all times. That speaks to robust content management practices and strict version control methodologies.)
Another serious concern is security. There’s no way most CPG IT departments would allow machines to be connected to the internet to access a cloud-based AI. That’s why there’s so much buzz right now in the AI community about self-contained language models that are designed to run on a local machine,
Another wrote, “It could help the next generation of operators to understand and troubleshoot the equipment.”
However, there were skeptics.
“Details, details, details,” one respondent cautioned. “Need to understand the scope of the tool and interaction(s) with HMI on the shop oor. Would need to understand how the AI tool interfaces with non-OEM plant or company speci c process(es) to avoid con icting instructions.”
Another said, “Our industry would function more safely with wellde ned logic. AI at this point isn’t transparent enough in its decision making.”
A third respondent suggested that AI chat doesn’t go nearly far enough. “AI interactions will not be helpful. What will be helpful is
which some have taken to calling small language models (SLMs). No internet connection required.
Also, SLMs can run on any PC-based control or PC-based HMI without an internet connection. That’s because they are a fraction of the size of current large language models, require a fraction of the computing power, and can yield performance coming close to or even exceeding that of large language models, depending on the application. They also eliminate any latency associated with round-trip communications to the cloud. Most experts now believe that the future of AI in the plant revolves around self-contained AI based on highly tuned and purpose-built SLMs that operate locally within the machine or plant.
Visit pwgo.to/8656 or scan the QR code to read more on risk assessment as it relates to generative AI in packaging and processing machinery.
A huge issue is trust. For people to trust answers from AI chat, it must be configured to cite sources for any answers it provides (“Based on the OEM manual, section 2.3…”). This helps dispel the “black box” perception that many have regarding AI.
Finally, the ability to tap into error histories, “last modified by” records, or maintenance schedules presumes a level of integration with not only the machine’s PLC, but any external Manufacturing Execution System (MES) or Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). The reality is that these systems may be running different versions, not integrated, or only partly digitized. (It also presumes a maturity level in “Industry 4.0” that is simply not present at many plants.) A phased approach starting with static manuals or information from a fixed repository is a good starting point before one tries to enable the integration of advanced diagnostics that require real-time data from sensors and control systems. PW
when AI can make decisions during a run without interacting with operators. For example, if print registration starts to slip, AI makes microadjustments to maintain registration on its own, no operator involvement. Having the equipment interacting with the operators will cause more headaches than it’s worth.”
The reality is that this kind of truly autonomous operation remains years in the future for a host of reasons related to safety, regulatory, liability, and technology-readiness issues. Also, it’s engineering of a different magnitude from the OEM’s perspective: true autonomy requires changes in control logic, sensor data, and the addition of robust machine learning models that go well beyond what a chatbot interface requires. The AI chat described in this survey is an operator and techni-
cian support tool and communication channel, not dynamic or autonomous machine operation.
Recognizing that no technology is perfect, another countered not to let the perfect get in the way of the good. “Instant response is better than no response or searching for a manager.”
And another said, “More intuitive HMIs would be higher on my priority list.” Another dismissed any issues with HMIs, saying “Operators generally learn how to operate the equipment and become familiar with the machine setting screen info.”
The survey was designed to expose different potential features and capabilities to CPG professionals involved in buying and supporting equipment, including the ability for AI to:
• Respond to operators in a chat with links to short videos
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• Operate in multiple languages
• Offer “push-to-talk” functionality bypassing the need to type
A majority of respondents said these features would be “very helpful” on their packaging and processing equipment. “Shortcuts to helpful videos, speaking to equipment on info needs/ changes instead of just typing info in would be very helpful additions related to AI capabilities,” wrote one respondent.
Of course, plants can be loud, and factory-speci c tuning of the audio or special microphones may be required for push-to-talk functionality.
The survey then went on to ask respondents to score a handful of use cases for both operators and technicians. (See charts above and below, and reference the sidebar to this article at pwgo. to/8657 for detailed de nitions and examples used in the survey.)
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The survey was also a bit of a trojan horse, designed to educate respondents about all the possibilities. That’s why we tacked on a question at the end, asking respondents whether their initial answer (about whether AI chat embedded into equipment would be useful) has changed once they went through the survey and saw all the potential use cases. Those answering “very useful” jumped from 59% to 70%.
Finally, we asked whether AI chat functionality would be more useful in packaging equipment or processing equipment. The clear majority said it’s equally useful in both, though there were a fair number that leaned more toward wanting to see it on packaging equipment.
The tools available to both OEMs and CPGs for incorporating AI are rapidly evolving. Several of the large automation suppliers including Rockwell Automation, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Beckhoff, and B&R have released “copilot” style functionality for writing PLC code, and some are already experimenting with AI chat style functionality. There are also several third-party tools (pwgo.to/8648) available today that bear exploring. It’s early days still, but the appetite does appear to be there for exploring how AI and AI chat could support the operation of packaging and processing equipment while reducing the potential burden around training and support, leading to more uptime.
While a natural language interface can reduce friction, it should be clear that operators and technicians will still need fundamental training to interpret machine feedback safely and ef ciently. At the end of the day, packaging equipment is mission-critical, and AI chat is not a substitute for thorough instruction and understanding of how equip-
Now that you’ve taken the survey, has your answer to the rst question changed? Would adding AI chat capability to your equipment be useful?
No, today’s HMIs are good enough
Nice to have but not a top priority
Yes, this would be very helpful
ment operates. A poorly trained operator can make mistakes even with top-notch AI chat. Nor, as indicated earlier, is AI chat a replacement for the HMI. Sometimes it’s just faster to press a button.
But incorporating some sort of AI chat seems sensible and, perhaps, inevitable. The rst step would be a pilot project with a cooperative OEM and newer/less-experienced operators who might bene t the most. PW
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Welcome to Packaging World’s inaugural Annual Outlook report—at least to the rst half of it. In this issue, we’ll look at sustainability, automation and robotics, and workforce. A second installment focused on digitalization, e-commerce, and contract packaging is slated for our upcoming March/April 2025 issue.
Why launch an Annual Outlook Report? What are we aiming to accomplish? Sometime last year, PMMI Media Group and Packaging World editors concluded that the packaging landscape, in fact the wider CPG and brand owner ecosystem, is changing faster than ever. That’s true of the world in general, so we’re not claiming this is some unique insight. But if it’s changing so quickly, then we should be able to measure that change. Our goal is to benchmark and follow trends, shifts, and changes in sentiment as they evolve to keep up with this rapid and accelerating pace of change.
Given this is our rst go-round, we don’t have any past results to compare to this recent set of survey responses. As such, what follows admittedly is a static picture of a moving target. But I’d argue that it does its job in taking our CPG and brand owner readers’ temperature on a variety of topics that are tectonically drifting, affecting their businesses.
Under the undulating umbrella of sustainability, for instance, paperization is a major packaging trend that’s clearly borne out in the results tackled by Anne Marie Mohan on the next page. Material substrates are shifting both in response to consumer demand and the specter of future regulations or legislation, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) perhaps casting the longest shadow.
Meanwhile, two inextricably linked topics that exist in orbit of one another—issues surrounding workforce and labor, and the connected adoption of automation and robotics—continue to make their mark on packaging. Sean Riley tracks the reasons underpinning packaging’s shift toward automation, while Casey Flanagan teases out differences be-
In the pages that follow, PMMI Media Group editors reveal, analyze, interpret, and discuss with experts results of the firstever Packaging World Annual Outlook Report. The undertaking represents a wide-ranging, big-picture view of the most impactful topics and issues faced by brand owners, consumerpackaged goods (CPG) companies, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, and food and beverage manufacturers and packagers. Over the course of July, August, and September 2024, editors developed, pressure-tested with CPG experts, and deployed five distinct email surveys. Containing only eight to 10 questions each, these surveys aimed to bring into sharp relief the nuanced features of what to expect from in packaging over the coming year. The surveys were sent to equally portioned segments of PW’s CPG readership, on these five pillar topics:
Sustainability (page 82)—88 respondents
Automation & Robotics (page 92)—118 respondents
Workforce (page 100)—79 respondents
E-comm & D2C (March/April issue)—118 respondents
Digitalization (March/April issue)—96 respondents
A sixth topic and pillar of the Annual Outlook Report, on the topic of contract packaging, piggybacked off survey results gathered and analyzed by PMMI’s Business Intelligence, released in October 2024’s “Contract Packaging & Manufacturing: Drivers of Machinery Investments.” From the wider results of that report, we narrowed our focus to the specific voices of brand owners, and their sustained interest in contract packaging services. PW
tween more and less skilled labor positions. Both ask experts how to best to bridge productivity gaps, whether it be through people or machines.
In the immortal words of one Ferris Bueller way back in 1986, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” That’s what we’re trying to do with this Annual Outlook Report—to take stock of where the biggest trends stand once every year, and do so through a consistent, quantitative lens. But all these surveys have a squishier qualitative element by way of write-in answers. Those individual sentiments are related in the text as well. For now, we have a snapshot. Over time, we hope to be able to draw meaningful trend lines such that we can make some real predictions for the coming year and draw an accurate map of the landscape our CPG and brand owner readers are navigating every day. —Matt Reynolds
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Driven by consumer demand for more sustainable packaging, CPGs turn to new materials such as paper and bio-based/compostable plastic, but higher costs, material complexity, and other limitations may slow adoption.
By Anne Marie Mohan, Senior Editor
Since the Ellen MacArthur Foundation released its seminal report, “New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics,” in late 2017, and followed it with The Global Commitment a year later, there has been an immense focus by CPGs on creating a circular economy for packaging.
Through The Global Commitment, over 250 businesses—including some of the world’s largest plastic producers, retailers, and consumer packaged goods companies—representing 20% of the world’s plastic packaging, made ambitious pledges to reduce their plastic and plastic pollution by 2025. Although many have made progress, most have fallen short of their goals. Their experiences over the years have shown that transitioning to a circular economy for packaging is far more complex than anticipated.
At the same time, smaller CPGs have also been working to reduce the carbon footprint of their packaging, though without making the same ambitious commitments. While the changes to their packaging might not have as big an impact, their smaller size has allowed them to experiment with innovative solutions. But progress has still been slow.
Against this background, our survey offers a snapshot of CPG’s current packaging material use, future sustainability goals, decision-making drivers, and challenges, along with predictions for 2025.
When survey respondents were asked to list the top three packaging materials that make up their primary packaging mix, paper came out on top, at 82%, followed by exible lm, at 35%, and rigid plastic, at 26%. Bringing up the rear were metal, including aluminum and steel, (18%), glass (13%), and bio-based (6%) and compostable (5%) plastic.
The 82% gure for paper may be in ated however, as 39% of respondents listed corrugated packaging, typically used for shipping, as part of the mix. This suggests some respondents included secondary packaging in their answers. Even excluding corrugated though, paper remains dominant, with paperboard at 20%, exible paper at 13%, and paper pulp at 10%, for a total of 43%.
According to Olga Kachook, director of the Sustainable Packaging
What top three primary materials make up your packaging mix now, and what changes/additions will you be making in 2025?
What are your top considerations when making a change from one packaging material to another for greater sustainability?
Consumers can place package in recycle bin
Consumers see the package is made from recycled material
Lightweighting, right-sizing, input reduction
Includes backyard/home and industrial compostability
PFAS, BPA, PVC, etc.
Greenhouse gas emissions reduction
Non-fossil, renewable sourcing
No microplastic leakage into ocean, environment, or bloodstream
Coalition, these numbers track with the trend the SPC is seeing around “paperization,” where paper is being used for a number of new applications, including snack packaging, protective packaging, and produce packaging. “Most of these categories are using molded ber, paperboard, or laminated paper,” she explains.
Alastair Dorward, CEO of bio-based laundry and detergent pod company Dropps, agrees with Kachook’s assessment. “This research certainly aligns with the broader trends we’ve observed,” he says.
“While much of the corrugated material in the market is used for secondary packaging, paperboard remains a leading option for sustainable primary packaging because of its high recyclability,” he adds, citing statistics from Bain & Company that indicate just 9% of plastic is recycled versus 65% of paperboard.
While Unilever’s Senior Packaging and Sustainability ManagerHealth & Wellbeing, Kelly Murosky, agrees with paper’s top position, she says she’s surprised to see ber-based exible lm ranking 3% higher than pulp. “There’s a lot of work going into exible barrier papers, but there aren’t a lot of recyclable paper lms on the market,” she says.
Murosky was also surprised to see exible lm in second place, followed by rigid plastic, although she says that “ lm is becoming more and more popular for lightweighting.” She adds that the use of exible lm by e-comm companies such as clothing brands “could have brought that number up.”
Jeff Cloetingth, managing director of Industrials & Packaging Sectors at L.E.K. Consulting, has less con dence in the results. “We see a lot less paper as a primary packaging format, and a lot of instances of exible plastics or rigid containers with a closure or metal cans or glass [for primary packaging], particularly for center aisle-type products, where you need some type of barrier property that allows for shelf-life extension.”
Recyclability
79%, or nearly 4 out of 5 respondents, indicate that recyclability and use of recycled content is one of the top two factors in favor of a package’s sustainability
Note: Percentages add up to more than 100% since respondents were asked to choose more than one option.
When respondents were asked, “If you plan on making changes to your primary packaging mix in the next 12 months, what materials will you be adding or moving to?” (with the option to select three), of the 49% who reported they will be making a change, 28% selected paper. The next-highest percentages were from bio-based (12%) and compostable plastic (9%), totaling 21%—a notable 62.5% increase over 2024. These were followed by rigid plastic at 11%, metal at 12%, exible plastic at 8%, and glass at 2%.
Re ecting on the responses on paper and compostable and biobased plastics, Murosky con rmed that “these are the big sustainability buzz items at the moment.” However, given the complexities of both material types for certain applications coupled with the limitations around their recovery, survey respondents’ intentions may be more aspirational than realistic.
“There’s a lot of sentiment that plastic is bad,” says Murosky. “That’s why in response CPGs are saying, ‘Okay, well, let’s go to paper. Even if it’s littered in the environment, it will break down.’ But from a technical standpoint, paper doesn’t provide the best barrier against water, or oxygen and grease. You’re then adding coatings, which compromise paper’s recyclability.”
Bio-based and compostable plastics also pose technical challenges, particularly in cases where multiple layers are required, and they are even more dif cult to dispose of responsibly, given the dearth of industrial composting infrastructure in the U.S.
Shawn French, director of Innovation & Packaging Engineering at Danone North America, believes compostable packaging is “a bit of greenwashing.” He says, “Can you bury a Lay’s potato chip bag in your garden and come back a year later to nd that it’s completely dissolved?
Or does it need to go to an industrial composting facility, which might not even be available? I would have expected more people to say they would switch to using monolayer lm instead, because it’s recyclable.”
Nevertheless, SPC’s Kachook believes increased use of these materials is reasonable, especially when you consider applying these solutions to speci c categories, rather than across all packaging formats. “For example, applying compostability to the produce category makes a lot of sense because of the correlation with food and the ease of composting both packaging and leftover/spoiled items,” she says. “Drop-in bio-based plastics are very feasible to implement and have been around for decades at this point. The switch to paper seems to be happening at a very rapid pace already, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see continued growth.”
Kachook’s observation that paper, bio-based plastics, and compostable plastics work best when matched with the right applications is true for all packaging materials. The most sustainable option depends on a full life-cycle assessment. Still, CPGs seem to have coalesced around several speci c material characteristics when seeking sustainability.
When asked about their top considerations for switching to sustainable packaging, with an option to select two, 54% of respondents chose recyclability, followed by recycled content (25%) and material reduction (21%). While those we spoke with say these results make sense, some believe material reduction should rank higher.
“I believe material reduction drives change more than recycled content because recycled content can be more expensive, whereas material reduction lowers costs,” says Murosky. At Unilever, material reduction is often paired with recycled content, with the savings resulting from less material offsetting the increased cost of PCR.
Kachook agrees that recyclability is a top motivator, especially in light of CPGs’ packaging goals and current pressures from consumers and legislators. However, she considers it misguided. “The most impactful action in this list would be material reduction,” she says. “I would like to see more companies focus on that strategy, along with designing reusable and re llable systems.” That’s a perspective that aligns with EPA’s “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” waste hierarchy.
Both she and Dorward believe it’s recyclability that’s driving the popularity of paper. “Consumers are highly responsive to paperboard packaging, as it aligns with their growing preference for materials that can be easily recycled at home,” Dorward says. “The synergy between consumer behavior and existing infrastructure makes paperboard an increasingly attractive option for brands prioritizing sustainability.”
Other drivers for material changes included compostability (16%), greenhouse gas/CO2 reduction (15%), material health (BPA, PFAS, PVC, etc.), bio-based (10%), and plastic-free (8%).
While recycled content appears to be a driver in the selection of more sustainable materials, the majority of respondents (40%) are using just 25% or less PCR in their packaging by weight. Murosky is not surprised. “Twenty- ve percent seems to be the entry point into PCR without having major color or contamination issues,” she says. “In addition, a lot of the early [extended producer responsibility] mandates require 25% PCR and then increase from there as the years go on.”
Kachook says the 25% gure aligns with her expectations, since PCR
much,
What kinds of PCR/PIR are you using in your recycled content packaging?
PCR plastic for rigid packaging PCR paper
PCR plastic for exible packaging PIR paper
PIR plastic for exible packaging
PIR plastic for rigid packaging
Note: Percentages add up to more than 100% since respondents were asked to choose more than one option.
*PCR = Post-consumer recycled PIR = Post-industrial recycled
can cost two to three times more than virgin resin, and food-grade PCR is often limited.
Looking primarily at paperboard, Dorward agrees that cost is certainly a factor, but he also attributes the low number to the reduced durability of recycled ber. “Higher PCR content can compromise the structural integrity of paperboard, making it more prone to tearing, crushing, or losing rigidity,” he says.
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Still, when respondents were asked what type of PCR they are using in their primary packaging with the option to select two, 70% selected paper. This was followed by PCR plastic for rigids (32%) and PCR plastic for exibles (26%). From there, the numbers dropped precipitously to 6% each for glass and aluminum.
While some gures seem accurate, for example, paper and rigids, as they are primarily used for non-food-contact applications, others seem less so. Among them, French questioned the low number for aluminum, since “every can is able to be made into a new can.” Murosky did as well, noting that “everyone claims that aluminum is in nitely recyclable and is the most recyclable material.” This result could be explained by the survey demographics, with only a few beverage CPGs represented.
French also believes glass, at 6%, is low. While the material is highly recyclable, the EPA reports that the U.S. recycling rate for glass in the U.S. is just 30 to 33% versus 90%-plus in some European countries. This is almost certainly because many U.S. municipal recycling facilities (MRFs) no longer collect glass, given that the cost to transport it to a processor can sometimes outweigh the pro t, hence a limited supply.
As previously noted, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s creation of The Global Commitment in 2018 catalyzed some of the world’s most prominent CPGs to make public commitments to reduce the environmental impact of their packaging. Meanwhile, smaller CPGs have kept their sustainable packaging efforts largely under wraps. It’s not surprising then that only 39% of our survey respondents, most of whom represent small- to mid-sized companies, reported that they have made public announcements/commitments around achieving speci c sustainable packaging or GHG/CO2 reduction goals.
Note:
Murosky speculates this low number could also be the result of “greenhushing,” where companies are intentionally keeping information on their sustainability progress quiet for fear of being accused of greenwashing or being criticized if they fail to meet their goals.
Dorward, on the other hand, attributes it to the cost of sustainability. “We’re seeing tremendous efforts from vendors to commercialize innovative packaging options, and we love partnering with innovators to push the boundaries and nd long-term solutions,” he says. “However, in most cases, the reality is that sustainable packaging often comes with a premium cost, which can be a barrier for some companies as they weigh sustainability against maintaining affordability for customers.”
Not coincidentally, when we asked respondents what they expect the greatest hurdles will be to making a switch to more sustainable packaging in the coming year, the majority (78%) said cost. The next largest hurdle they reported is access to materials, such as PCR, compostable, biobased, etc., in the quantities required, at 36%.
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Kachook suggests a link between the two, saying, that “cost is driven by access, so the less available a material is, or the less commercially scaled it is—for example, seaweed for packaging applications—the more expensive it will be, and the less brands will be able to use it.”
The relationship between cost and new materials also plays out when CPGs attempt to run more sustainable materials, such as recycled-content or bio-based lms, or compostable packaging, on existing equipment. “It requires a whole lot of work,” says French. “And so it’s the cost of the material and the trials and the line time and the travel for people to go to a plant and evaluate things.”
Results of the survey indicate that running new materials on existing equipment is another likely hurdle, with 24% of respondents ticking off this box. To a lesser extent, they also anticipate a lack of expertise, knowledge, or resources within the company and a lack of support from management as being potential hurdles, at 18% and 4%, respectively.
CPGs are in the business of making money, yet adopting more sustainable packaging often comes with a higher price tag. While it’s true that many companies have altruistic intentions, the motivation to invest in environmentally friendly packaging is more often the result of outside forces. According to our respondents, brand reputation, at 39%, will be the biggest driver in the coming year, followed by regulatory requirements (33%) and consumer demand (25%).
“It seems that brand reputation and consumer demand are essentially two sides of the same coin,” says Kachook. “So if these were combined, I think that would very accurately describe the biggest driver right now for brands.”
Accumulation solutions allow sensitive processes to stay operational when interruptions happen downstream.
French agrees, citing the in uence of younger consumers and social media. “I have a son and a daughter who are thirty-somethings, and they’re more driven by a company’s reputation and their online presence and the things they’re doing environmentally and socially,” he says.
Moving forward, it is expected that EPR will begin to have an even greater in uence. According to Kachook, “Regulatory requirements will start to rise on the list as more states pass EPR legislation in the U.S. and companies start to feel the pressure of reporting and compliance.”
Our survey concluded with an invitation to respondents to share with us the trends they see growing over the next 12 months. Predictably, most responses fell under three categories: compostable/bio-based/biodegradable packaging, paper packaging, and recycling/recycled-content.
In addition, our contributors were asked to make a few predictions of their own for 2025. French shares that of late Danone has been particularly focused on recycled content, especially with PET and HDPE. However, he says that “getting to 100% recycled has really been a challenge, because there are some geometry and physical properties that change” as you add more recycled content.
Danone is also following the paperization trend, having recently introduced Silk Kids Oatmilk Blend in a recyclable paperboard carton. As reported by PW, the carton was also the rst to use a new datamatrix label from The Recycling Partnership to aid consumers in proper disposal of the package (see pwgo.to/8645).
Kachook predicts EPR will come to the fore in 2025. “Five states in the U.S. and many countries around the world already have EPR legislation, and as the states start to outline what these programs will look like and their fee structure, more and more companies will start to cite this as a driver.” She adds that on-pack labeling and disposal instructions, such as those used by Danone, will also be a key area for growth.
From Cloetingth’s perspective, the coming year will see global CPGs pushing back on 2025 sustainability commitment timelines—something that several large CPGs have already announced (see pwgo.to/8646). He also predicts CPGs will begin looking at the environmental sustainability of their packaging in a more holistic way. “This includes not just the packaging’s attributes, but also the total life-cycle and greenhouse gas emissions pro le associated with the product and the manufacturing of that product upstream.”
And lastly, Cloetingth expects CPGs to continue to invest in R&D-led material innovation in select applications “to make inroads that solve the current set of packaging challenges … and
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enable longer-term sustainability for brands at parity and at scale.”
Murosky offers a laundry list of trends for 2025. Among them is paper, including exible barrier papers and molded ber. “I don’t think anybody’s quite cracked it, so I think that’s why we’ll continue to see it grow,” she says.
She also anticipates a resurgence of reusable and re llable packaging—“maybe in the foodservice space, maybe less so in the CPG space”—after the format took a pause with COVID.
1 Bio-based/compostable
2 Recyclable/recycled content
3 Paper
4 Elimination of single-use plastics
5 Elimination of polystyrene
6 Increased consumer demand for sustainability
7 Reuse
8 Reduced Costs
The bio-based space is also one to watch, she advises. “Resin suppliers are putting a lot of stock in that, because we see petroleum as bad.” She says she looks forward to seeing how resin companies will develop rst, second, and third generation feedstocks from used cooking oil or other waste that can then be used to produce plastics. She adds that carbon capture is “another super interesting space.”
As for advanced recycling—a technology noted by respondents in the open-ended question— Murosky says its future development could depend on EPR regulations and whether advanced-recycled materials will be counted as recycled content. The same holds true for bio-based materials. “I think if we were to see EPR expressly include advanced recycling as well as bio-based or renewable feedstocks, we would probably see those increase dramatically.”
But Murosky’s predictions, or aspirations for the industry, extend far beyond the next 12 months. “For me, my ultimate goal of packaging would be that everything is in 75% to 100% PCR, and we have to put virgin back into the plastic because we have such a high rate of PCR moving through the system. And then we would supplement it with a bio-based or chemically recycled resin,” she says. “So can we get there in 10 years? I don’t know. I hope we can. That would mean I helped do my job if we can get the industry there.” PW
According to a Packaging World Survey, CPGs are paradoxically either adding or not adding automation and robotics for very similar, predictable reasons.
By Sean Riley, Senior News Director
The results of our Packaging World reader survey of CPGs on automation and robotics could be combined with our workforce survey (page 100) in that staf ng issues are a running theme throughout the data.
First things rst, however, according to those surveyed, companies are very interested in adding automation and robotics. Almost two-thirds of respondents (65%) indicated they would add automation equipment, cobots, or robotics to their packaging operations in the coming year. Two of the strongest reasons cited for adding the new technology center around labor issues.
In fact, the number one reason in favor of adding automation equipment, as cited by 61% of respondents, was reducing the cost of labor/good ROI case. Automation and robotics have evolved to the point
“I’m not at all surprised by the results,” Rice says. “The workforce simply did not come back after the pandemic. The diminished labor pool seems to be the justi cation needed to make [adding automation and robotics] happen.”
A survey respondent from Territorial Seed Company echoed Rice’s sentiments when he completed the survey, adding that the increase in innovation in automation and robotics, coupled with labor shortages, makes their addition all but inevitable.
We would be remiss if we didn’t add that speed/throughput/volume was the second most cited reason for adding automation, coming in at 35%. Still, we feel, and we may be editorializing too much here, that is more of a typical response, as we have found through decades of covering the packaging industry that most capital equipment purchases are made with an aim toward improving output.
where operations can justify to the C-suite that it is more cost-effective over the long term to add automation vs. the high cost of labor or, as 34% indicated, the dif culty in nding labor to start with. In a workforce crisis that has reached epidemic levels, automation is being highlighted by CPGs as a leading solution.
Rick Rice, controls engineer/project manager for Crest Foods, evaluated the survey data and was not shocked by the correlation between adding automation and robotics and workforce issues.
“Reducing cost and adding speed to a production line has always been a good thing,” Rice says. The next two most common survey responses, at 27% and 26% respectively, provide more insight into the workforce tie-in. The former indicates a desire to add automation equipment to improve repeatability, accuracy, and precision. The latter concerns improving safety, highlighting ergonomics and risk assessment.
“When we had a large labor pool, it was easy to throw people at [end-of-line palletizing, for example], but a smaller workforce means we have to keep the skilled folks on the primary packaging end of the line,” says Rice.
A survey respondent from Coca-Cola also highlighted palletizing in particular as an area where planned automation will increase worker safety by eliminating the need for them to do those repetitive, heavylifting tasks. A fellow survey respondent from pet brand Whisker also saw potential in added automation by expanding how it could reallocate current labor by taking it off end-of-line operations.
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These responses align with the “three Ds” often associated as critical factors in implementing robotics and automation: Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous. Operators in a packaging facility are human. They get fatigued and bored and experience wear and tear from physical activities. This can put them in danger and create a situation where their accuracy can wane from hours of repeating the same uninteresting task. By automating these tasks, the worker is physically and mentally preserved while allowing companies to move the labor to more inviting jobs that stimulate the mind. It’s not a giant leap to determine that a more engaged worker is likelier to enjoy the job and less likely to leave, improving retention rates.
As a senior engineer at Procter & Gamble, Ervin Hardee has seen automation enter the packaging sphere and improve exponentially over the past two decades. In his opinion, these improvements are major contributors to the survey results.
“Robotics have come a long way in just the last 5 to 10 years,” he says. “Safety, ease of operation/programming, skills needed, cost, and exibility, to name a few of the reasons [how they have improved.]”
Based on the survey respondents’ comments, it is no coincidence
that when it came to adding robotics, 38% speci ed end-of-line (palletizing, etc.), followed by secondary packaging at 32% and primary packaging at 25%.
Randy Quick, director of global engineering and maintenance for Spectrum Brands, can relate with the results, citing many of the listed options and reasons for adding automation.
“Most of [our] planned automation is in direct packaging, inspection, speci c manual operations, and palletizing that is not currently automated,” Quick said. He further speci ed an example involved replacing a taxing manual operation with robotics to alleviate the need for temp employees.
“One example is a gallon bottle that has a trigger attached to the handle for the consumer to use if needed in the bottle,” he says. “Currently, these are attached manually by temp employees, but in the future, this will be a custom-built robotic application for this speci c task.”
Other applications include inserting a loose hose end in the case of three bottles for Amazon sales. This is currently accomplished with temp labor as well. Soon, these will be handled by custom-designed robotics for this application.
The RC12 collaborative robot palletizer efficiently handles payloads of up to 10 kg at a rate of up to 14 boxes per minute with a double-pick gripper. With no need for a surrounding fence or cage, it maintains a small footprint, allowing for flexible installation in various settings.
When it came speci cally to automation, respondents named secondary and end-of-line tasks like cartoning (28%), case/tray packing (25%), case erecting/sealing (25%), labeling (25%), and palletizing/ depalletizing (19%) as the leading areas where they plan automation and robotics. It’s often the case that primary packaging is where automation happens rst, since it tends to require the most speed and precision. Afterward, the bottleneck of slower and less repeatable human labor travels downstream on the line. So, results indicate some level of packaging automation sophistication already in place among respondents’ organizations—bound to be the case with the likes of Coca-Cola and P&G responding. But as Rice mentioned, it seems that downstream tasks are increasingly being automated to pinch hit for a dwindling workforce.
Survey respondents noted nearly the same lead answer regarding both the biggest internal ally in procuring automation and robotics and the most signi cant internal hurdle to adding the technologies: plant operations. Hardee summed it up succinctly, “Operations would be the biggest customer, so it has to bene t them, or it’s a hard sell.”
Sure enough, 57% of survey respondents listed operations as their biggest ally, followed by engineering at 50%, plant maintenance at 24%, and the C-suite at 20%. No other perceived ally broke 20%, with third-party integrators (18%), robotics manufacturers (17%), packaging machinery OEMs (15%), supply chain leadership (12%), and procurement (11%) all breaking double digits. Rice felt these aligned perfectly with how his company has found automation and robotics implementation.
“Getting operations, engineering, and maintenance on board was the rst step, but now that we are well down the road on this, we have some solid vendors who are equally invested in the process, and we have developed some great relationships to make it happen,” says Rice “It is important to note that we didn’t put all our eggs in one [vendor] basket and that is helping to encourage innovation.”
As for the biggest internal obstacles in adding automation or robots, procurement barely nosed out plant operations, 38% to 34%. Plant maintenance was also the third biggest hurdle—just as it was the third largest ally—registering 28% of the vote, followed by the C-suite at 27% and supply chain leaders at 20%. Engineering (13%), third-party integrators (12%), robotics manufacturers (11%), and packaging machinery OEMs (11%) were the only other hurdles that broke into double digits.
Procurement’s last place ranking as an implementation ally, and rst place nish as a hurdle, is a clear-cut signal from our survey respondents. They perceive the people who hold the purse strings to be the most resistant to adding automation.
Obviously, no data is complete without revealing the other side of the coin. While nearly 65% of respondents indicated they would be adding robotics in 2025, that left a not insigni cant 35% who have chosen not to automate in the coming year. Let’s nd out their reasons.
Respondents’ number one reason for not adding automation and robotics, with half citing it as a reason, was the cost of automation and a bad ROI case.
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Top ve reasons for not adding automation
Cost (50%)
Limited footprint (36%)
Lack of skilled labor to train/run/maintain (32%)
In exibility of equipment (27%)
Complexity of programming (23%)
Note: Percentages add up to more than 100% since respondents were asked to choose more than one option.
A survey respondent from QuocViet stated plainly that his company was not planning to add automation because, “it costs too much.”
This wasn’t too surprising as cost is typically the biggest hurdle to capital equipment purchases.
“We haven’t seen much in the way of hurdles, but cost is always a determining factor,” Rice says. “We recognize the advantage of automating our lines but want to be scally responsible about how far/how fast we go about this.”
The next most cited reason makes perfect sense and doesn’t require much analysis—35% of respondents who aren’t purchasing equipment simply do not have the oor space to accommodate the often-large footprint of automation or robotics.
Conversely, a survey respondent who is a packaging engineer for the Bel Group actually cited the improved ability of robotics to t into smaller footprints as one reason he believes automation will continue to increase in usage.
Rice feels that robotics, and particularly cobots, have come so far that even footprint issues will soon be rendered moot.
“Cobots are a huge part of the automation of a line,” he says. “We can literally replace a human and have the robot work right beside another human, con dent that the human will be safe.”
Two of the three next most common responses bring in facets of the workforce crisis. The third most mentioned hurdle to adding robotics and automation at 31% is nding skilled technicians and maintenance staff. CPGs are simply having too hard of a time nding the labor to properly run and maintain their current equipment, so how can they justify adding what they perceive as even more complex new automation and robotics? The fourth most frequently mentioned response at 27% was the in exibility of equipment and frequently changing packaging designs and materials, more on that soon. Right behind that at number ve, 24% cite the biggest hurdle towards incorporating automation and robotics as the complexity of programming controls or the inability for unskilled workers to operate the equipment.
All told, our data represent quite a unique situation. For both sides—those who are embracing automation, and those who aren’t—a running theme of workforce issues is listed as their reasoning, and as the most signi cant criteria for their responses and potential decision-making. Those who are adding automation believe it can help offset the rising cost of labor, perhaps lead to worker retention by eliminating repetitive tasks, and offset the inability to nd labor in general. Those who won’t be incorporating automation cite the inability to nd labor as well. But they also fear the technology is too complex for the workers they are able to nd. Or it requires too skilled (read: expensive) of workers to maintain overtime. Quite the quandary.
And brie y back to that hurdle regarding equipment in exibility—we’ve already seen SKU proliferation force OEMs to build machines that are capable of fast changeovers, to accommodate more product variety than ever. Exacerbating the existing trend is the advent of new materials—like the paperization movement described on page 82, or compostable lms—that didn’t exist when much of this equipment was built. Packaging materials once designed or converted with machinability in mind, now serve a different master in sustainability. Brands need machines that can keep with these trends and be ready for whatever’s next. PW
Packaging industry companies are finding challenges in finding, keeping, and training workers to handle increasingly advanced machinery.
By Casey Flanagan, Associate Editor
The packaging industry is facing mounting workforce challenges, with companies reporting high turnover, dif culty hiring skilled workers, and trouble moving toward computerized equipment.
While the pandemic-era workforce turbulence that marked recent years has calmed, persistent trends like a lack of applicants, low retention rates, and training hurdles for advanced machinery will continue to hinder operations until the industry adopts fresh strategies.
“It’s a combination of nding the educated people that want to work on a production line and then having the commitment that you’re going to educate the people and teach them how that equipment works,” says Brian Stepowany, senior manager of packaging R&D at B&G Foods, owner of Green Giant, Crisco, Ortega, and several other brands. Stepowany notes a dif culty in “getting the higher output, more expensive ma-
How would you rate the dif culty of nding unskilled packaging equipment operators who can be trained to operate your machine?
chinery, with screens, computer systems, and potentially AI capabilities moving forward (see page 40), and having the people to run it.”
In a survey on the packaging workforce conducted for the 2025 Annual Outlook Report, packaging industry stakeholders reported hiring challenges for “unskilled packaging operators,” or workers who will need training before they can run packaging machinery.
Over half (58%) of respondents say it’s somewhat dif cult to nd unskilled packaging operators, while 20% nd it very dif cult, for a total of 78% running into challenges as they seek out unskilled workers. As for the rest, 11% of respondents nd it easy to hire these workers, while 11% are simply not hiring for this type of position.
Competition with other companies seeking employees contributes to the lack of applicants, respondents claim. One respondent notes they nd it “harder to recruit in rural areas due to heavy competition, which brings about examination of compensation and bene ts packages.”
Another respondent concurs, expecting in the next year that, “difculty in nding new employees will continue to increase; pay constraints make it dif cult to compete with other companies.”
The hiring challenge is also a generational problem, respondents indicate. “It’s getting more challenging, due to the fact that old workers are retiring, and the new generation is not showing interest in this kind of labor,” one respondent says. “They are more into technology and wanting to work remotely.”
Even when CPG companies manage to attract young workers, the retirement of experienced packaging line operators creates a skills gap that requires extensive training for new hires. “You have to work your way up through the ranks,” Stepowany explains. “[The company is] not going to immediately put you in charge of a machine because it’s an expensive machine and there are requirements as far as throughput and volumes to produce each day.”
The growing adoption of advanced automated machinery adds to hiring challenges, as companies need more experienced applicants, extended training periods, or greater buy-in from seasoned workers to effectively operate the line.
“Old-timers are going to be less likely to want to learn those systems,” says Stepowany. “It’s not as easy as someone coming out of high
school, community college, or college, who is going to spend the time and energy to run a piece of equipment.”
In hiring “skilled packaging operators,” or those who join with prior experience and training, the problem is even more pronounced. More companies overall are having dif culties nding skilled (84%) workers compared to unskilled (77%), which is a small but signi cant gap. Worse yet, a much larger percentage of them (42% compared to 20%) claim that the dif culties are major.
The share of surveyed company representatives that nd it somewhat dif cult to hire skilled candidates is 43%, slightly lower than that gure for unskilled workers. Ultimately, it’s hard to nd both unskilled and unskilled labor, but it’s a bit harder to nd the skilled folks.
Differences are marginal on the end of the spectrum that don’t seem to be feeling the workforce shortage pain. A smaller percentage (6%) think it’s easy to nd skilled candidates, than think it’s easy to nd unskilled (12%). About the same number of respondents just don’t have their hat in the ring looking for these positions (9% aren’t looking for unskilled positions, 11% aren’t looking for skilled positions). Regardless, what’s pretty stunning is that only around 10% of survey respondents aren’t looking for either skilled or unskilled candidates, and only another 10% nd it easy to nd them. That means around 80% are looking for skilled and unskilled workers and they’re having trouble doing so.
Respondents indicate the problem isn’t going away anytime soon.
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Nearly half (48%) of respondents anticipate that nding these workers will become even more challenging over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 37% expect hiring dif culties to remain unchanged, and only 8% are optimistic about improvement. An additional 7% of respondents say they have no plans to hire for these positions in the next year.
“Packaging professionals with the preferred backgrounds are difcult to nd. We are having to hire less experienced people and train them, which takes far longer than we would like,” one respondent says.
Several factors can contribute to a company’s ability to attract skilled packaging talent. “It depends upon the need, the equipment, and the location. Is your plant located by a major city that has a bigger draw, or are you in the middle of a farm eld? You have to understand your minimum requirement, your ideal requirement, and how much you are willing to pay, how much you are willing to invest in that person to get them to where they can operate the equipment,” Stepowany says.
Hiring challenges for skilled packaging machinery maintenance technicians present a slightly different story. While the dif culties remain, a notable number of companies are opting not to hire these workers at all.
riod of time, if they retire, you don’t replace them,” Stepowany says. “You have your line technician who can tweak and adjust things, maybe switch a belt. But for a major overhaul, you’re going outside.”
Automated equipment may be able to replace simple or mundane tasks on the packaging line, but it requires some in-house expertise to run properly, according to Brant Blanchard, instrument and electrical specialist at poultry producer Pilgrim’s.
“A machine is no smarter than a person, but if you nd a smart person to program it, it’s going to work well. It does what the programmer tells it to do, as opposed to putting somebody out [on the line] that doesn’t really know what to do,” Blanchard explains. “The problem is when it breaks, nding somebody that knows how to x it.”
This problem can be alleviated to an extent for end users if OEMs “design automation that’s easy to x,” Blanchard says, suggesting the implementation of intuitive troubleshooting and diagnostics. Perhaps onboard AI could be on the way to help?
Blanchard recognizes the dif culty of sourcing talent who can troubleshoot and x equipment when it breaks, but he also sees automation as an opportunity for more technical careers if companies fully commit to it. “It would make more high-tech jobs, to give people more of an incentive to go into things like computer programming, like a mix between blue and white collar,” he says.
The largest share of companies (40%) report that it is very dif cult to ll these positions. An additional 32% describe the process as somewhat dif cult, leaving only a small percentage (7%) who say it is easy to nd quali ed candidates.
About a fth (21%) of respondents aren’t actively looking to hire maintenance technicians at all. Among these, 47% rely on their equipment manufacturers to handle machine maintenance, suggesting that outsourcing maintenance has become a viable alternative for some companies.
The shift toward advanced automation in packaging machinery could be contributing to this reliance on outside support, Stepowany says. Drawing on his 40 years of experience in the industry, he notes a shift away from in-house fabrication of parts for maintenance.
“Now it’s all laser cut, so that shop within the facility has gone away. Someone who has been the shop mechanic or line mechanic for a pe-
Finding quali ed machine operators or maintenance technicians is just the rst hurdle for CPG companies; retention remains a signi cant challenge, as highlighted by survey respondents.
More than half (58%) of respondents are experiencing between 10% and 29% annual turnover. The greatest share, 34% of all respondents, sees 10-19% turnover, while another quarter (24%) see 20-29% annual turnover. Just over a quarter of respondents (26%) are experiencing turnover rates higher than that, anywhere above 30%.
In an open-ended question on the state of the packaging workforce and how it might change over the next year, several responses indicated frustrations with high turnover.
“I foresee a rotating door where a minimum increase in wage will be incentive for an employee to at minimum look elsewhere and likely go. [I expect] a four-to-six-month rotation from job to job,” says one respondent.
Another respondent shares a similar sentiment, saying, “I would like to see an increase in skilled workers, but there is a lack of work ethic in many that we see. It seems that we keep someone for two to three months, then they go somewhere else that pays more, and they consistently do this throughout the area. It is a vicious cycle. So, there may be more skilled people out there, but without the work ethic or desire to remain at one job for long periods of time, I do not see a lot of hope.”
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Editor’s note: I wouldn’t charge employees who “go somewhere else that pays more” with a “lack of work ethic.” I’d chalk that up to common sense. Work ethic and supply/demand economics are two different subjects, but I’ll grant that both are certainly factors in today’s packaging workforce dynamic.
Compensation, and competition as workers move to other companies for better offers, were consistent themes in these responses. The scarcity of packaging engineers can place companies in a bidding war as workers jump to the next company for better pay and bene ts.
“If the person is at Company A and he’s making $15 an hour, and Company B says, ‘Hey, you can come here and we’ll give you better bene ts, we’ll pay $18 an hour,’ who’s going to stop Company A from coming back in a year or two and offering the guy $20?” says Stepowany. “There are games going on in the packaging engineering eld, because there is a limited number of potential employees.”
If operational constraints allow for it, a stronger commitment to creating a stable, competitive environment can be a solution to worker retention. Stepowany points to an anecdote where culture around work-
force commitments played a signi cant role in operations.
“We had an East Coast and a West Coast supplier. The East Coast one had no issues whatsoever. But the West Coast, there was nothing but complaints,” Stepowany says. Upon investigation, the problem became clear. “We went to the West Coast supplier and found out that they were using temps. They didn’t have the commitment to keep the people
there, offering the bene ts, offering the pay that’s required.”
This lack of commitment to workers led to a reciprocal lack of dedication from the workers, incentivizing them to leave for the next available opportunity.
“If that’s the case, then you have to adjust what you’re doing or understand the marketplace better,” says Stepowany.
Pilgrim’s has demonstrated a commitment to its maintenance technicians through training, according to Blanchard.
All maintenance employees at Pilgrim’s participate in an Impact Training program, which includes general instruction and detailed training on speci c crafts, using online classes and in-person lab training with instructors.
“It’s also based on your pay scale,” Blanchard says. “Everybody that comes in takes a test, and whatever you score on that test, basically the level you’re at, that’s what you’re hired at. As you go through the training and go up a level, you immediately get a raise whenever you increase.”
This method continuously upskills workers and incentivizes commitment to stay at the company in the process.
If CPG companies are struggling to nd workers, it’s worth considering where they’re searching.
When asked about their top three hiring methods for the next year, packaging stakeholders largely pointed to digital tools. Over half of respondents cited online job portals like LinkedIn or Indeed (52%) and their own company website’s career page (51%) as preferred methods. These approaches re ect an effort to engage workers in the digital spaces with which they are likely familiar.
Companies are also taking advantage of industry and workforce networking through active workforce connection programs. The most popular methods within this category are recruitment agencies and staf ng rms (37%) and job fairs (16%).
Passive hiring methods are used at a rate comparable to active networking initiatives. Notably, 37% of respondents rely on employee referral incentive programs as a preferred hiring method; the same percentage that favors recruitment agencies and staf ng rms. Walk-in applicants also fall within this category, with 19% of respondents identifying it as a preferred method.
Academic resources for job placement and hiring might be underutilized as a hiring method in packaging among our survey respondents. Each method within this category (10% local community colleges/technical schools, 8% university internships, and 8% on-campus recruiting) garnered 10% utilization or less. Another way to look at it, of course, is that together, those three academic categories represent 26% utilization. Though that still trails passive digital’s (LinkedIn, Indeed) 52% usage rate, passive digital is certainly easier to do.
Representatives from the community college ranks certainly think these programs and institutions present signi cant untapped potential. Still, there are several reasons companies may not engage with these resources, according to Dan Ortego, apprenticeship manager at the College of Lake County, a Northern Illinois community college which provides hands-on training and education for STEM careers. There’s plenty of blame to go around, he says, so maybe these programs represent white space for better recruiting into packaging jobs.
“On the college and technical training side, it could be a lack of
awareness of what skills are needed or what types of jobs are available in the packaging and processing industry, and/or a lack of knowledge about who to connect with to establish relationships,” Ortego says. “On the employer side, most employers have limited resources and may need to ll the position quickly. Employers will go where they have established relationships, a quick return on investment, and ll the position.”
Community college or technical school students are often recent high school graduates, those who are switching careers, or those who are returning to the workforce after some years away, Ortego explains. While students gain hands-on technical experience in these programs, some companies might hesitate to hire them with a limited resume or relevant work experience.
On the other hand, companies struggling to hire packaging line operators and machine technicians may bene t from turning their focus toward these potential applicants.
“The biggest advantage to partnering is developing a pipeline of talent with apprentices and interns who have a solid technical foundation and are taught skills correctly and safely,” says Ortego.
These academic programs can also help to upskill the current workforce, to “grow future managers and leaders for their organizations,” he adds.
Only 17% of surveyed packaging industry respondents report nding it easy to train employees on computerized, automated equipment, with 69% experiencing some challenges, and 14% nding it very difcult. Academic resources could be a valuable solution for this, allowing
companies to tap into established curriculums and proven methods of education for their current and future workforce.
B&G Foods leverages academic partnerships with notable success, according to Stepowany. Although these resources are less frequently applied to packaging line roles, “we de nitely use technical schools as well as colleges as far as quality, supply chain, throughout corporate, as well as in the plants,” he says. “It’s a good testing eld to see what the people are like, and it gives them experience as well.”
As the packaging industry navigates its workforce challenges, there are encouraging signs of stability and opportunity.
“B&G itself is in the mode for buying new equipment, updating things, reinvesting our money within the facilities. We’re not seeing that backlog that we’ve seen for maintenance, new equipment, even spare parts,” says Stepowany. “Things have settled down a bit, and I think people are feeling the same way, as far as committing to full-time jobs and working for the long run.”
The shift away from pandemic-era operational pressures may help to foster an environment of long-term stability and growth, both for companies and employees.
To tackle today’s hiring and retention challenges, companies can consider investments in training programs and academic partnerships, and cultivate a workplace environment that offers competitive compensation, cultural value, stability, and clear opportunities for growth. PW
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D2C business Wild Alaskan Company ships its sustainably harvested, wild seafood using bio-based foam insulation that is home and industrially compostable as well as water soluble.
By Anne Marie Mohan, Senior Editor
Inspired by his family legacy of shing in Bristol Bay, Alaska—an occupation that began with his grandfather in the 1920s—Arron Kallenberg founded Wild Alaskan Company in 2017 to bring sustainably harvested, wild seafood to the masses. Articulated by Kallenberg, the company’s mission is to “accelerate humanity’s transition to sustainable food systems by fostering meaningful, interconnected relationships between human beings, wild seafood, and the planet.”
Kallenberg was driven to create Wild Alaskan after he learned of the rampant seafood fraud propagated through deceptive seafood product labeling in many of America’s cities. “It wasn’t until I moved to the ‘Lower 48’ to go to college that I realized how hard it was to eat real food— let alone reliably nd sustainably harvested, wild seafood,” he says.
Today, over half the seafood Americans eat is imported, according to estimates from experts. A signi cant portion of that sh is unsustainably farmed. “It is harmful to the environment,” Kallenberg explains.
“As someone who grew up as part of Alaska’s seafood industry, I had no choice but to start this company,” he adds. “I believe that it is my responsibility to share and protect this amazing, renewable natural food source for generations to come.”
Given its focus on environmental stewardship, Wild Alaskan is just as rigorous when it comes to the sustainability of its D2C packaging. Says Packaging Manager Garrett McMullen, “It wouldn’t sit well with our company values and our philosophy if we were delivering sustainably caught seafood in a poor packaging solution that was not environmentally friendly.”
Since it shipped its rst order, Wild Alaskan has been using a biobased foam insulating material from TemperPack that replaces the seafood industry-standard non-recyclable expanded polystyrene while providing the same functionality. Green Cell Foam does double duty when it comes to sustainability: It’s made from a non-fossil-based renewable resource, and it gives consumers a way to responsibly dispose of the material after it’s done its job.
Wild Alaskan is using a Green Cell Foam two-piece, AB panel design, with A covering the top, side, and bottom, and B used for the remaining three sides of its shipper.
With a home base in Homer, Alaska, Wild Alaskan ships wild-caught white sh and salmon as well as specialties such as prawns and crab sustainably caught in Alaska to consumers across the U.S. Subscription members can select from among several curated boxes containing 12 6-oz portions of quick-frozen, individually vacuum-sealed sh, or they can customize their order.
The company uses a non-recyclable lm to package its llets—the best option currently available to protect the seafood and comply with FDA requirements. However, its secondary packaging is fully recyclable or compostable. It uses two sizes of corrugated shippers. One is for the standard 12-piece order, while the other, larger shipper is used when a member wants to increase their order to “add on crab legs or scallops, for example, or take advantage of limited-time offers,” explains McMullen. To keep the llets frozen, Wild Alaskan uses dry ice.
The most critical component of the shipper though is the insulated liner. “We have to maintain that frozen state of the seafood for up to 72 hours of shipping,” says McMullen. “That can be quite challenging if you’re shipping to Florida or Texas in August.”
Traditionally, EPS is used as insulation for cold-chain shipping. While effective, it’s petroleum based and, because it consists of 98% air, it’s too expensive to store and transport for recycling. TemperPack’s cornstarchbased material is completely compostable—not only in industrial envi-
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ronments, but also in home compost. In fact, it’s been certi ed home compostable by TÜV Austria. Even more interesting, however, is the fact that Green Cell Foam can be dissolved in water. “It’s sink safe; it dissolves almost immediately,” says McMullen. He adds that the material offers a foolproof way for consumers to responsibly dispose of the insulation. “If it ends up in a land ll, it’s still going to dissolve at a really rapid rate,” he says. On the downside, because it’s water soluble, Green Cell Foam will begin to dissolve if it comes in contact with moisture or liquid in the shipper. To prevent this, the insulation panels are encapsulated in a low-density polyethylene lm that is store drop-off recyclable. Says McMullen, while there’s no way around using the lm currently, “knowing TemperPack, it’s probably at the top of their list to nd a solution.”
After Wild Alaskan selected Green Cell Foam for its insulation, TemperPack began the work of custom designing an optimized solution for the seafood company’s requirements. “Here in our facility, we have a team of packaging engineers and an ISTA-certi ed thermal transport lab,” shares Jed Dutton, TemperPack VP of marketing and sustainability. “When we start working with a customer, it’s a very collaborative process to get the packaging right, because it’s very easy to underpackage, and it’s very easy to overpackage.”
Among the design considerations are the nature of the payload that’s being shipped, its safe temperature requirement, and the shipping duration, which depends on what courier the customer will be using. Another is the type of coolant, either dry ice or gel packs, that will be used. “Each of them works well, and each of them has their own challenges,” says Dutton. “If it’s gel packs and it’s a frozen product, the shipper becomes a lot heavier, and you have to use a lot more insulation. Dry ice is much more ef cient, but it’s also not as easy to source, and you’ve got to do a few things to insulate the payload from the dry ice.”
Read about Wild Alaskan’s updated packaging graphics in a related article on page 22.
Once TemperPack has all this information, it designs a packout that is then put through simulation testing along with chamber testing, which is done in an enclosed, climate-controlled cabinet that uses sensors and instruments to monitor and regulate environmental variables. “You can set different pro les for different temperatures,” explains McMullen. “So for example, I could say that I want the shipper to be exposed to route-speci c temperature uctuations to mirror worst-case scenarios.”
From those results, TemperPack adjusts the design, modifying the thickness and density of the panels, the number of gel packs or amount of dry ice, or other variables such as box size. The tighter a box is packed, the less air ow and the greater the thermal performance. The more dead space, the quicker the dry ice will sublimate.
Starch-based Green Cell Foam is extruded and formed into sheets or panels using a proprietary process from TemperPack. Wild Alaskan is using a two-piece AB panel design, with A covering the top, side, and bottom, and B used for the remaining three sides of the shipper. The panels are manually packed into the box, after which the dry ice is added, followed by a corrugated insert that separates the dry ice from the product, and then nally the seafood.
Copy printed on the Green Cell Foam material advises members of the disposal options. In addition, a QR code printed on the shipper links to a page on Wild Alaskan’s website where members can learn more about how to compost or dissolve the material. “Sustainability is a big thing these days—it really comes down to educating our membership,” says McMullen. “It’s important to have sustainable seafood, so why wouldn’t it be important for our members to take action with the packaging? They really go hand in hand.”
While Wild Alaskan will always be looking for ways to increase the eco-friendliness of its packaging, Green Cell Foam has proven to be the best option for insulation. Says McMullen, “There are other solutions out there that we’ve looked at that we’re interested in, but nothing that we’ve seen matches Green Cell Foam.” PW
Weber Packaging Solutions’ Model 4050B uses an electric linear thruster and a tamp-blow label application with non-contact dispensing in the last .25 in. of travel, increasing speed over traditional pneumatic strokes with minimal air consumption.
Mespack’s MLC Series is designed to produce high quantities of large formats (up to 2,400 sachets/min) and can be tted to operate with sustainable materials, making it adaptable to new developments in sustainable packaging.
Mespack pwgo.to/8604
Syntegon’s automated Settle Plate Changer SPC 1000 for aseptic lling process monitoring increases machine availability and ensures compliance with EU GMP Annex 1 by reducing manual interventions and offering easy retro ts.
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As Seen at PACK EXPO International
Triangle Package Machinery’s standalone integrated zipper applicator allows any existing vertical form/ ll/seal bagger to be converted from traditional pillow-style bags to reclosable zipper pouches.
Triangle Package Machinery Co. pwgo.to/8622
As Seen at PACK EXPO International
FANUC America’s CRX 30iA is engineered for food and beverage handling, wet environments, and operations with stringent hygienic requirements and offers a robust design, high payload, long reach, and intuitive programming.
FANUC pwgo.to/8624
Sidel’s compact RoboAccess_Pal S combines robots and cobots for an all-in-one solution that offers improved agility, operability, and compactness, delivering speeds up to 12 cycles/min and enabling high case payloads up to 25 kg.
Sidel Group pwgo.to/8641
Robopac’s Robot S7 is a self-propelled stretch wrapper that uses robotic technology to wrap and stabilize palletized loads of various sizes and weights, offering high throughput and portability to eliminate bottlenecks and minimize lm consumption.
Robopac, an Aetna Group brand pwgo.to/8602
Econocorp’s Spartan M-Pro is designed to handle a variety of small carton applications, offering simultaneous package handling functions, easy adjustments, and a small footprint to maximize production ef ciency and minimize space requirements.
Econocorp pwgo.to/8609
Accutek’s APOF Series provides precise lling of low-to-medium viscosity liquids, like personal care items and food products, so they present the same visual ll level when arranged on a shelf together.
Accutek pwgo.to/8642
Plan IT’s RotoBagger, a hygienic, pre-made pouch rotary packaging machine designed for food producers, features a servo changeover system, high-speed packaging capabilities, and a washdown-ready design.
Plan IT pwgo.to/8592
Anritsu’s AW9 Series high-speed checkweigher offers accurate weighing for demanding production lines, minimizing the impact of conveyor vibrations on weighing performance and ensuring precise measurements of up to 1,000 products/min.
Anritsu pwgo.to/8621
R.A Jones’ Celestion MTX is a modular top-load platform that uses advanced robotic technology to package a wide range of products, including pouches, wraps, and kits, while offering exibility, scalability, and enhanced operator ergonomics.
R.A Jones, a Coesia company pwgo.to/8625
The V-30 vertical cross sealer from Garrido, integrated with a Morrison timing screw drive unit and a Garvey Bi-Flo Accumulation conveyor, offers a complete, high-speed, compact multi-packing solution for the alcohol industry.
Morrison Container Handling Solutions
Garrido USA Garvey Corporation pwgo.to/8638
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As Seen at PACK EXPO International
Dorner’s C3 uses FDA-approved fabric belting to facilitate both a 90- and 180-deg curve, maximizing the machine’s footprint while improving overall throughput, and it complies with BISSC standards, ideal for bakery or confectionary production setting.
Dorner, a Columbus McKinnon brand pwgo.to/8623
As Seen at PACK EXPO International Automated
Mitsubishi Electric Automation’s ARIA is a exible, cost-effective robotic solution that can be tailored to various applications, offering a small footprint, con gurable options, and preprogrammed software packages to address labor shortages.
Mitsubishi Electric Automation pwgo.to/8633
As Seen at PACK EXPO International Control Panel
Paxton Products’ Control Panel is a safe, scalable solution that simpli es the management and control of Paxton’s centrifugal blowers, providing features like easy installation, emergency stop, and washdown compliance.
Paxton Products pwgo.to/8597
Whether sourcing equipment, nding materials, or exploring new solutions, PMMI ProSource puts the industry’s leading suppliers at your ngertips—all year long.
Oben Group acquires Terphane, a polyester film producer with operations in Brazil and the U.S., to expand its global reach and product offerings.
Syntegon, in collaboration with Azbil Corporation, acquires Telstar to expand its liquid filling offerings and provide complete pharmaceutical solutions.
TricorBraun acquires Veritiv Containers, a national distributor of rigid packaging solutions, to expand its North American footprint and offer customers expanded solutions and supply chain options.
ProMach launches its Wine & Spirits Solutions group, which aims to provide a complete portfolio of process, equipment, and systems integration for the wine and spirits industry.
ProMach acquires HMC Products, a manufacturer of horizontal form/fill/seal machines, to expand its flexible packaging solutions portfolio and enhance its capabilities in machine manufacturing, refurbishment, and servicing.
ProMach brands Bartelt and Matrix have merged their sales teams into the Flexible Packaging Group, which is led by Camilo Sanchez and offers customers a single point of contact for both horizontal and vertical flexible packaging solutions.
Sanner Group acquires Gilero LLC, a medical device CDMO, to expand its end-to-end services and global reach in the healthcare packaging and medical device sectors.
Nordic Cold Chain Solutions acquires Minus Works and expands its operations to scale Minus Works’ technology and provide sustainable cold chain solutions nationwide.
ExxonMobil introduces Signature Polymers, a rebranded portfolio that consolidates all of its polyolefin products to simplify navigation and make it easier for companies to find the right solutions.
Infinite Reality acquires Zappar, an XR platform and creative studio, adding advanced software and hardware to its portfolio and strengthening its position in the immersive technology market.
SupplyOne, Inc. acquires Gulf Packaging, Inc., a Southeast-based corrugated packaging converter, to expand its geographic reach and offer customers in the region a wider range of custom packaging solutions.
Machine Solutions Inc. acquires Alpine Laser LLC, a laser processing technology company, to enhance its capabilities in providing advanced equipment and services to the medical device market.
Canadian-owned PLAN IT Packaging Systems is expanding operations to Tampa, Fla., with a 35,000-sq.-ft. aimed at enhancing production of its vertical form/fill/seal, case packing, and robotics solutions.
Multi-Color Corporation (MCC) acquires Starport Technologies, a provider of smart label solutions, to bolster its RFID capabilities and expand its offerings in intelligent packaging solutions.
TerraCycle, a global recycling specialist, acquires North Coast Services, a New Hampshire-based company specializing in universal waste recycling, to expand its operations in the U.S. and strengthen its commitment to sustainable waste management.
Frain Industries is expanding its facility in Carol Stream, Ill., with a 200,000-sq.-ft. showroom intended to create an immersive experience for customers.
Bioelements Group partners with Michigan State University’s School of Packaging to test the biodegradation of its Bio E-8i film under composting conditions.
Sidel’s Actis coating technology, which enhances PET bottle shelf life and enables lightweighting, receives the APR Design for Recyclability Recognition for its compatibility with existing recycling processes.
Harpak-ULMA combines its connected packaging platforms with pre-packaging processing from Cabinplant to offer a comprehensive solution for automated food packaging with increased efficiency and reduced waste.
Colbert Packaging celebrates its 65th year as a paperboard packaging supplier to pharmaceutical, healthcare, and consumer industries.
Dan Felton is appointed the new president and chief executive officer of the Flexible Packaging Association (FPA).
Stephen Scherger of Graphic Packaging International is elected board chairman of the Paperboard Packaging Council, returning to the position he held in 2012.
Hoffmann Neopac appoints Manfred Zurkirch as its new chief executive officer, succeeding Mark Aegler
William C. Young, Plastipak’s founder president and CEO since 1967, is transitioning out of his role and handing the reins to Edward V. Morgan, while remaining as Chairman of the Board.
Yves Ottiger is promoted to CEO of Robatech Group, succeeding Martin Meier, who led the company since 2018 and will continue to serve in an advisory role.
Precision Automation names Daniel F. Rexon its new president.
Loma Systems appoints Samantha Neves as its first global marketing director to strengthen its marketing presence and drive customer-focused innovation.
Sean Bannon is promoted to president of Ska Fabricating to drive the company’s growth in the automated packaging equipment industry.
Columbia Machine names Mark Nelson as the North American sales manager for its palletizing division and Jeremy Dwyer as general manager of Columbia PSI, LLC, to lead growth in bagging, palletizing, and packaging automation solutions.
ProMach brand WLS promotes Breanna Behr to regional sales manager for the Northeastern U.S. to help manufacturers in healthcare, personal care, and beverage implement advanced labeling systems.
Denver Lu is appointed the managing director of Duravant China Co Ltd to oversee the company’s business development and expansion in the Chinese market.
Viking Masek hires Nick Knapp, Alexandria Sielaff, and Beth Sarabia to its new executive team with the goal of simplifying the customer experience.
Danny Lopez, of The Haire Group, and Tom Staal, representing Coastal Containers, are elected to the TAPPI Corrugated Packaging Council, which acts as the governing body for TAPPI’s Corrugated Packaging Division.
Formic appoints Joel Onyshuk as vice president of sales to scale the company’s business footprint and Todd Plotner as the company’s first general counsel to strengthen finance infrastructure.
Christian Chamberlain joins Bubble Paper as national site manufacturing director to oversee the company’s expanding operations and ensure continued delivery of high-quality, sustainable packaging solutions.
Yaskawa America’s Drives and Motion Division appoints Doug Burnside as Drives Group vice president, succeeding Mark Bernicky, who will transition to a role focused on customer relationships.
Global branding acceleration agency bluemarlin names Samantha Dumont as executive creative director of its new London HQ to focus on extending agency capabilities across consumer goods and corporate clients, particularly in beverage, personal care, and energy.
Richard Bull, managing director and co-founder of Enercon Industries Ltd., retires after nearly four decades of service to the induction cap sealing specialist.
Manfred Bonetsmuller, who founded end-of-line packaging solutions company SOMIC in 1974 and has been its managing director for decades, passes away at the age of 83.
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By Tom Seymour, CPP
The integration of arti cial intelligence (AI) in packaging manufacturing has become a necessity. AI is revolutionizing traditional processes, driving ef ciency, and creating new opportunities for innovation. Let’s examine how AI technology is transforming both business operations and manufacturing for packagers.
AI’s impact on business operations is profound, offering tools that can streamline daily functions, enhance decision-making, and optimize resource allocation. Packaging companies of all sizes are increasingly relying on AI to improve efficiency and drive growth in four areas:
1. Predictive analytics for demand forecasting. One of the most common uses of AI in business is predictive analytics. Packaging manufacturers are leveraging AI-powered algorithms to forecast demand for specific products. By analyzing historical sales data, customer behavior patterns, and even external factors such as market trends or economic conditions, AI can accurately predict future demand. Manufacturers can optimize production schedules, reduce waste, and ensure adequate packaging materials are available when needed.
2. Consumer relationship management and personalization. AI enhances customer relationship management by providing actionable insights into consumer behavior. Advanced CRM systems powered by AI can analyze data from multiple channels—such as social media, email, and sales reports—to help tailor marketing strategies, improve customer engagement, and predict future buying patterns. The result is a more personalized experience for consumers, which can lead to increased sales and stronger customer loyalty.
3. Supply chain optimization. AI can optimize supply chain management by tracking inventory levels in real time, predicting supply chain disruptions, and recommending the most efficient delivery routes. This leads to cost savings, faster delivery times, and a more sustainable approach to packaging production by minimizing wasted resources. AI tools can also enhance supplier relationships by automating communication and ensuring timely placement of orders based on predictive insights.
4. Automation of administrative tasks. In addition to improving operations, AI can automate routine administrative tasks, allowing packaging manufacturers to focus on higher-value activities. For instance, AI-powered tools can automate data entry, manage payroll, and even provide human resource functions like employee scheduling and performance tracking. This automation reduces the risk of errors and frees up human resources for more strategic initiatives, increasing productivity.
Though AI is transforming everyday business functions, its impact on packaging manufacturing is even more evident. AI is enabling manufacturers to push the boundaries of what is possible, from material innovation to sustainability efforts and beyond. Here are six areas where that is occurring:
1. Smart packaging design. AI is driving the development of smart packaging that goes beyond aesthetics. Through advanced algorithms, AI can create packaging designs optimized for material usage, strength, and recyclability. Designers can input specific criteria—such as the desired level of protection, weight limits, or sustainability goals—and AI can generate design options that balance these factors. This reduces the time spent on trial-and-error methods.
2. Quality control and defect detection. AI can play a significant role in packaging manufacturing quality control. It can scan packaging products at various stages of the manufacturing process and detect defects at a micro-level that would be invisible to the human eye, whereas traditional quality checks are labor-intensive and can miss subtle defects. Machine learning algorithms analyze thousands of samples and learn to recognize patterns associated with defects, significantly improving the accuracy and speed of quality control checks.
3. Customization at scale. With consumer demand increasing for personalized products, AI is enabling packaging manufacturers to offer mass customization. AI algorithms can quickly adjust designs, dimensions, or graphics for individual packaging products based on customer preferences or specific product requirements. This flexibility allows businesses to offer previously impossible bespoke packaging solutions at scale.
4. Predictive maintenance of equipment. Unplanned manufacturing downtime due to equipment failure can be costly. AI-based predictive maintenance systems use sensors and real-time data to monitor the health of manufacturing equipment. These systems can predict when a machine is likely to fail and recommend maintenance actions.
5. Sustainability and waste reduction. AI can drive sustainability initiatives within packaging manufacturing. By analyzing the environmental impact of different materials and manufacturing processes, AI can recommend more sustainable alternatives.
6. Robotics and AI for smart factories. AI-powered robotics are gaining traction. In smart factories, AI-controlled robots can handle tasks such as sorting, assembling, and packaging products with incredible precision.
As AI technology evolves, its applications in packaging manufacturing will expand and manufacturers a competitive edge. For packaging companies, the time to embrace AI is now. PW
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