The pandemic's impact evident on packaging

Someday there will be discussion about COVID-19 in the past tense. But that day isn't today. As the pandemic has dragged along, plastics packaging companies have pivoted again and again, dodging and dealing with issues as they arose. As they arise.

Safety. Labor. Supply chain. Consumer behavior. And some surprises.

"The beginning of the pandemic, we thought there would be a slowdown in the need or the move for sustainability," Rebecca Casey, senior vice president of marketing and strategy at TC Transcontinental Packaging, recalled during a panel discussion at the Plastics Caps & Closures 2021 conference.

But that really has not happened at the flexible packaging maker.

"When we look at our innovation pipeline, we see that the majority of our projects are around sustainability," she said. "We see big trends here, and we'll continue to see that movement."

For flexible packaging maker ProAmpac, the pandemic saw some customers put a pause on packaging innovation to focus on the crisis, said Sal Pellingra, vice president of global application and innovation department at the company's Collaboration & Innovation Center.

"Some of the development had to stop and they had to focus on feeding and getting supplies out to people," he said during the panel discussion.

At the same time, however, the pandemic also brought about a need for companies to adapt to market conditions.

"Where we saw a lot of growth also was with e-commerce. So a lot of folks now went from shopping directly to shopping online. And that has led, in some ways, to a lot of flexible packages and spouted pouches replacing rigids," Pellingra said during the conference organized by Plastics News.

"So when you think about omni channel and products going to retail, now we have a diversion of a lot of that product that went to retail now going to e-commerce. And it's not packaged the same. So whatever you can do to reduce the void fill in the packages, to reduce breakage, to reduce the amount of packaging that's been shipped around, flexible packaging does an excellent job with that," he said.

Flexibles, Pellingra said, cut the amount of packaging material from 80 to 95 percent in general, he said.

Concerns about the transmissibility of COVID-19 also led to the use of more packaging in certain applications, which put some customers more at ease when shopping.

"You see more packaging. Consumers, in general, were happier to see produce wrapped in a package than having to pick through the produce. In general, the pandemic brought up a lot of issues, a lot of issues with the workforce. But it brought a lot of growth and a lot of focus in some ways on the core business and how to support new growth areas like e-commerce," Pellingra said.

Alex Hoffer is chief revenue officer at Hoffer Plastics Corp. in South Elgin, Ill. He has seen what he called "an explosion" of growth in caps and fitments in single-serve packaging as COVID-19 took hold.

This is a continuation of a trend witnessed before the pandemic started but pushed along since last spring.

"The trend that I've seen is American consumers, by and large, are more focused on health, more focused on being able to take a healthy package on the go. That on-the-go piece was definitely evident way before the pandemic, but I think as kids are going back to school, we've seen an uptick," Hoffer said.

He also is seeing more consideration for flexible packaging in segments that traditionally have been served by rigid containers.

"There's this trend that people are starting to become more open to flexible packaging. I don't know if it's exactly COVID related or if it's just market saturation related, but that's a trend that we're seeing," Hoffer said.