My main literature to identify the 2020 trends are from 4 main sources: Mintel, Pira Smithers, Industrial Packaging and Packaging Strategies. These 4 sources pointed out 3 main topics
🔺Lessen environmental impact
🔺Suit consumer lifestyle
🔺Enhance communication
💚 "Lessen environmental impact" seems to be the number one trend in all 4 sources plus other literatures that seems to indicate the same thing. We look at lessen the environmental impact through packaging that reduces the impact both in term of raw material, manufacturing, and end of life and also through the packaging that preserve the product so we do not create more food loss. This two have to be balance. We do not want a package that have very little impact on the environment but it cannot protect the product throughout the supply chain.
Lessen the environmental impact have many keywords both in term of system concept or the packaging itself. To name a few, these are environmental friendly, sustainable packaging, responsible packaging, circular economy, cradle-to-cradle, zero waste, optimum design, compostable, biodegradable, renewable, recyclable, reusable, recycled, reduce. The drive behind this is the customer but us as an individual customer does not have a voice loud enough to push this to be number 1 trend in packaging. It has to be a big customer such as a large retailer, e.g. Walmart. Walmart now runs a campaign called Project Gigaton to reduce greenhouse gas by 1 Gtons. Packaging is one of the target area they use to achieve their goal with the concept of circular economy. It priorities reduction of packaging material and whatever is still necessary, it should be recyclable.
When I analyze the trend, there are two major approaches: First, the effort to change to any material that would disappear from the environment faster than the commonly used plastic. This can be either the compostable plastic such as PLA or its blend or the pulp-based material. This help reduces the accumulated waste, however, there is still a need to excavate new resources in order to produce new packaging.
With the problem of biodegradab/compostable material, the second approach to environmental impact is recycle. Actually recycle had been popular once in 1990s. The concept is now back but with a much more advanced technology. One example is rPET, that employs molecular recycling so that the material can become a food packaging material again. Another example is to use high barrier coating such as carbon-based material or SiOx. This allow the thing coating material to apply to the thin gauge of commonly used packaging material; thus, recyclable and resource reduction.
Lessen the environmental impact also comes in a form of food loss. Many times food production has even higher carbon footprint than the packaging. Therefore, packaging should protect product until its expected shelf life in order to lessen the impact. Many packaging technology are employed in prolonging the shelf life of the product. Some of the commonly used are: modified atmosphere packaging and active packaging. And like recycling, the concept is the same but technology enable the concept to be more efficient.
💙 Suiting consumer lifestyle is another trend that has been identified and, of course, this depends very much on who is the customer. In Thailand, there were 4 consumer trends that has been identified: more money to spend (probably before COVID-19), more environmental concern, use more delivery service and use more e-commerce. Also, the trend of internet and social media has great influence on package design. Many people today (39%) shares the product or unboxing the product on the social media and many more people (61%) are influenced by that. So, the package should be of high quality and has fun experience or story incorporated into it. Also, the "omni-channel" concept extends to packaging. Products are now sold through many channel. Packaging should be consistent across the channel. And of course, when talking about suiting consumer lifestyle, I have to mention "convenience" is still on the list in this category.
💜 Enhance communication is another category that this time I have a lot of fun seeing new things and new concept. Packaging used to be a "silent salesman" giving information passively through its graphic design. Now, it has changed by quite a bit and enhanced communication seems to include 3 categories: communicating real time product quality, communicating hidden information and communicating the fun experience.
Many years ago when I look for communicating real time product quality, I usually see the ripeness indicator on a pear packaging and a freshness quality (based on the amount of microorganism). Today I still see ripeness indicator but it is on Thai fruit packaging namely durian and mango. Thermochromic inks, the long time existing technology, is now used on beverage packaging to indicate an appropriate temperature for drinking. Another one that we see is sulphur dioxide indicator on longan.
For communicating information that is not on the package, there is more technology incorporated into the package. Some examples are the Near Field RFID Tag for anti-counterfeiting of Johnnie Walker and AR on the package of Ben & Jerry ice-cream that bring out the interactive picture that give information about the source of raw material. The latter enhance their brand image of using local raw material.
Finally, communicating the fun experience and this would be a talking point for word of mouth advertisement. The example I use is Mila Live Fish Pack, where the frozen fish product moves when it sense the presence of customer. This give the feeling of "freshness" of the fish. They take it a little further by putting it on the big screen in the supermarket for other people to see the reaction and that would attract more customer to come and see it. Another example is on Cheeze It for the football lover. It links the image on the package to the game to shoot the football (American Football, of course). Then they gave out price free ticket to the winner of the game.
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