This week, AEB participated in two different conferences that offered unique perspectives on the food and beverage business.  The Food Summit in Chicago delved into the areas of product innovation, food safety, and corporate sustainability.  The Global Pouch Forum in Florida discussed packaging technology innovation in the fastest growing segment of the packaging industry.  These different perspectives gave a nice picture of the different forces shaping the industry and shaping the packaging technology landscape.  Recurring themes included:

The painful economics of food safety. Consumers attention to the safety of packaged foods is rising due to recent high profile issues related to 1) illness related to foodborne pathogens and 2) concerns over the use of BPA in many common packaging materials.  Brand owners are taking unprecedented steps to manage a brand's exposure to safety concerns.  Representatives from the USDA discussed the impending sweeping changes to US food safety regulation being promised in the upcoming food safety bill at the Food Summit. At the Global Pouch Forum, coating and adhesives provider Henkel Corporation discussed the economics of managing packaging safety concerns.

Corporate sustainability efforts are encouraging CPGs to reduce their environmental footprint and introduce new sustainable packaging concepts.  Paul Comey discussed Green Mountain Coffee's sustainability program that includes building demand for sustainable products and taking steps to protect the environment.  Speakers at the Global Pouch Forum discussed the sustainability benefits of flexible packaging vs conventional rigid or paperboard based packaging.  Allied Development presented data showing carbon footprint reduction of 30-40% from moving to pouch based packaging from cups or cans.

Consumers are demanding healthier options in single serve, shelf stable formats.  With growth in big box retailers, consumers are looking to buy cases of shelf stable products and refrigerate as needed.  The shift in demand is driving the growth of aseptic packaging approaches that deliver high quality shelf stable products without preservatives and without the thermal degradation of hot fill or heat based processes.  AEB partner Gualapack announced their plans to deploy an aseptic pouch filler for pre-formed Cheerpack spouted pouches. 

Technology investment is evolving in response to turbulent financial markets, volatile energy and raw material costs, and the growth in smaller run product lines.  As large brand owners launch niche brands to compete with a growing group of beverage entrepreneurs, the importance of co-packers is growing.  Rather than invest in a full aseptic filling line for a new product line, brand owners are more likely to work with a co-packer.  This allows CPGs to avoid large capital expenditures in exchange for paying slightly higher unit costs -  brand owners are better able to match expenses with revenues, enabling a larger number of niche brands to enter the market.  At the same time, those installations making capital investments are more apt to consider measures of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that include operating costs associated with energy and water treatment.

The combination of these trends supports the need for new packaging sterilization technologies for aseptic packaging.  AEB's Blu technology delivers chemical free packaging sterilization to aseptic food and beverage applications.  With a compelling TCO, Blu enabled filling solutions are enabling innovation across all packaging formats including bottles, closures, pouches, bag-in-box, and form fill seal applications.  For more information on Blu, click here.