From the phase of finding new solutions to the planet’s increasingly pressing problems – in our little piece of the world they concern the sustainability of flexible packaging – we are moving on to the equally challenging phase of consolidation. This seems to be what the industry exhibiting at K 2022, the big event in mid-October, seems to be telling us, where the packaging supply chain also finds space and a growing voice. Not a marginal industry: however small the volumes it moves compared to other “heavier” applications, it makes possible nothing less than the preservation and circulation of food.
This, certainly, does not mean that it is slowing down the search for radical alternatives and absolute novelties. It simply means that many of the developments initiated during the past few years are now in the equally challenging stage of industrialization, where they are measured by the final processes of packaging and holding hard-won performance over time. The interview given to us by Nanni Bertorelli – Product Line Director Coating & Laminating at Bobst – paginated at the end of the issue, in the Special on New Materials, offers several interesting insights in this regard, as well as foreshadowing new business developments and changes in balances within the supply chain.
This is not to say that “pure” creativity will pass on the sidelines. The challenges that the future poses to us are such and so many that they certainly and still require the ability to see different, and to make radical innovation. So it gives us great pleasure to be able to suggest a trip to Milan at the end of October, in the district hosting the famous Fuori Salone, to discover the fruits of this year’s Brand Revolution Lab. These are “distruptive” packaging, communication and branding projects carried out over the course of the year by groups composed of brand companies, creative agencies and technology suppliers (machines, substrates, software…) – finally gathered around a table and “forced” to talk and understand each other under the aegis of the now famous Lab invented and managed by Stratego Group.
