USA - $22 billion market focuses on consumer and eco-friendly packages

The beverage packaging industry is experiencing a period of increasing innovation in design, materials and efficiency intended to meet cost and environmental concerns while enticing splintering consumer groups, according to Beverage Packaging Market Assessment - A Benchmark Study,conducted by Proactive Worldwide, Inc., on behalf of PMMI, the leading packaging and processing supply chain association.

Top beverage packaging trends PMMI expects to impact the market include:

eye-catching single serve packaging
cost-effective "green" packaging, driven by manufacturers' cost and environmental concerns
plastics as "the material of choice" because of rapid innovations likely leading to lighter, more eco-friendly packaging
new packaging machinery that is flexible and supports the latest container technologies
rapid growth for pouch containers as manufacturing technologies bring costs and speeds of pouch beverage production in line with high-speed glass bottle production
minimizing secondary packaging to cut costs and reduce overall carbon footprints.

Plastics dominate beverage segment

According to the report, the $22 billion U.S. beverage primary packaging market is dominated by plastics, with 40 percent of consumer goods companies (CPGs) using a variety of formats to attract consumers. Other materials used are aluminum (35 percent), glass (18 percent) and paper (5 percent), and today's most popular primary packaging format for beverages is the bottle, which the report puts at 55 percent of the marketplace.

Researchers predict market growth will exceed $28 billion by 2020, with plastics and bottles driving innovations and sales in that time.

Future is plastics, pouches

In addition to being the material of choice, beverage manufacturers expect plastics to drive a vast majority of incremental beverage container sales through 2020. Respondents to PMMI's survey spoke of plastic as the medium in which green, eco-friendly/bio-degradable packaging technologies will flourish. Additionally, innovation efforts with plastics are expected to continue focusing on improved break resistance, light weighting and features that reduce spilling.

Pouches are expected to show the greatest percentage growth between 2010 and 2020, increasing as much as 105.9 per cent, from $545 million to 1,378,000,000: New processing and packaging equipment has made pouches cost-effective for high volume operations, as companies can now run pouches as fast as other packaging formats. Environmentally, pouches require much less landfill space than plastic bottles and some pouches are completely biodegradable. In addition, when compared to glass bottles, pouches require a small fraction of the space and shipping infrastructure: The beverage volume transported in a truckload of quart-sized pouches would require nine trucks of glass or plastic bottles.

Within the aluminum, glass and paper container markets, respondents see much less overall innovation but noted that new aluminum bottle designs are providing manufacturers new ways to present their products - premium images that maintain the benefits of aluminum's thermally isolative properties.

About the Report

PMMI's Beverage Packaging Market Assessment - A Benchmark Study is based on interviews with 71 leading beverage manufacturers and packaging supply chain solutions providers, as well as other secondary source research. The study was designed for PMMI members to illustrate the trends and opportunities for all supply chain partners. Its Executive Summary is being made available to editors and industry free of charge as a service of PMMI.

PMMI released the full study, including the Executive Summary, to members earlier this month; members can download the report from PMMI.org at no charge. Non-members can purchase the report for US$3,500, at PMMI.org. Copies of the 11-page summary are available from:

http://www.pmmi.org/studies/2009_BvgInd_ExecSumm.pdf