The Impact of Coronavirus on Packaging

Delivery

This report comes in PPT.

Key Findings

Hygiene aspect of packaging is in high demand; packaging resilient in supply amid logistic hurdles

Packaging’s intrinsic role to protect and deliver safely to consumers has never been more true than during this health pandemic. With physical distancing and concern about minimising human contact on groceries, to reduce virus spread, packaging imparts safety. The industry proves resilient in meeting stockpiling peaks while navigating its own logistic obstacles, to include explaining its critical place in the supply chain, notably as countries apply movement restrictions.

Pandemic packaging imbalance: retail food, drink and hygiene secure as foodservice shuts down

Retail packaging has come to the fore as consumers spend more time at home due to distancing measures and out-of-home restrictions. Food and home care packaging is up, across pack materials, but led by flexibles; on-trade and specialist retail closure is harmful to keg and glass business, some recoup for glass evidenced by surge in retail beer and wine sales; innovation also to combat losses by pivoting to DTC models.

At-home infrequent shopper forgoes impulse to upsize and buy online; value for money will be increasingly sought

As occasions move into the home, impulse buys are down as consumers opt for at-home-friendly larger sizes and multipacks. E-commerce supports the upsizing trend with convenience of home delivery that further confers safety as consumers seek to minimise physical contact, per public health guidance. This retail shift is likely to entrench, beyond COVID-19, an opportunity for e-commerce-ready packaging. Affordability is to inevitably become more a feature in product/pack offering as consumers negotiate the economic fallout.

COVID-19 pause on sustainability but still on corporate and government agenda

Sustainability, the core influencer of the packaging industry in recent years, has, in the immediate term, been usurped by the coronavirus health emergency, as primary attention is necessarily on safety and supply. Headway will continue as government targets largely remain intact and as corporate progress to reduce waste and emissions, to improve recovery, recyclability, recycling, re-emerges.