Marketing, sales and consumer behaviour – November 2024
Food and drink
The annual Packaging Mix Report (214 kB) from the Beer Institute shows that the beer distribution for 2023 in the US is 64.1% aluminium cans, 26.9% glass bottles, and 8.9% draft. Imported beer remains predominantly packaged in glass bottles, with 55% of the volume.
On the one hand, people consume too much food, contributing to the worldwide surge in obesity rates. On the other hand, people waste too much food. For her thesis (7.44 MB) at the University of Groningen, Amber Werkman studied the interface between consumer food consumption and waste. Her conclusion: consumers snack less and waste less when they can control their total portion with small units/smaller pack sizes.
WUR researchers are working together with partners to develop a new food system within the project Food Waste: From Excess to Enough (FETE). At a recent conference they shared promising interventions, such as offering food in smaller packaging formats.
US packaging machinery market
In a recent report, PMMI forecasts the US packaging machinery market to grow to new highs through 2027. While the growth rate is projected to slow to 2.5% in 2024, the 2025 forecast calls for an upturn in growth rates to reach a high of 8.0% in 2027. You can download an executive summary after filling in your details. PMMI has also published a white paper exploring the issues, latest industry developments, forecasts and trends guiding investments in packaging and processing equipment and technology in the snack foods industry. You can download an executive summary after filling in your details.
EU plastics industry and biorefinery sector
Preliminary data (1.1 MB) from Plastics Europe show a steeper-than-expected downturn in the production of plastics and, for the first time, in mechanically recycled plastics production in 2023 in Europe. According to the president of Plastics Europe, the transformation to a circular plastics system is in acute danger from imported plastics which do not always meet EU standards.
A study (summary, 8.25 MB) commissioned by Cepi analyses developments in the EU biorefinery sector. The study, performed by nova-Institute, shows that biorefineries in the forest-based sector have more than doubled their turnover in just 3 years, reaching €6 billion.
EU: fake goods
According to a report (1.88 MB) by the EUIPO, approximately 152 million fake items were detained in the EU in 2023 (at the EU external border and in the internal market), a 77% increase from the previous year. Packaging material detentions dropped from 3rd to 6th place. On the other hand, the category “Labels, tags, stickers”, went from 7th to 4th place.
Consumers and the environment
Retailers’ use of environmentally friendly packaging is just as important to consumers as the availability of next-day delivery, according to the Global Sustainability Report 2024 by RetailX. You can download the report after filling in your details.
Only 53% of Irish residents can accurately identify what can actually be recycled, according to a survey by Repak.
Prices for plastics
Dutch trade magazine Vraag en Aanbod publishes a weekly overview of the prices for plastics (in Dutch). The prices given are estimated averages between the gross prices published in the trade journals and the net prices.
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