Keep the Earth Safe and the Drinks Safer

With environmental concerns, growing demand in the market flooding the beverage packaging manufacturers, the need of innovation in the processes has given rise to techniques and products that are eco-friendly, bio-degradable, and reduce the carbon footprint.

FREMONT, CA: As the food and beverage market undergoes transformations fuelled by digitalization, it becomes one of the major contenders in the queue for a facelift due to several changes. The beverage packaging sector assists in providing product support as well as external environmental protection to the product and resistance to tampering. The packaging sector also supports the reliable distribution of beverages through the different stages in the value chain. Packaging manufacturers are implementing innovative technologies as market competition intensifies, and growing demands from end-users need to be fulfilled. The packaging industry has maintained a considerably stable market position after the dawn of technology over the horizon. The capitalization of the market movement in the beverage industry is becoming difficult for the market leaders as the buying patterns, and demographic conditions are unstable and fluctuating. With various pressure points applied to the industry, the demand has been kept in mind while developing innovative, intelligent packaging systems. Smart systems which interact with the product or its surrounding to enhance the protection of the beverages, customer acceptability, and food safety are also recognized as key trends in the global market. The patterns which are predicted to change the packaging industry are:

1. Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Innovation of Products:

The main concerns in the packaging industry include the diminishing of deterioration, wastage of the product, and controlling the food damage. The transportation of goods needs to be efficient. The enhanced functionality of supply chain management practices facilitates practices for safer delivery of goods and secures product identity. The ever-changing preferences of end-users have contributed in majority to the enhancements of packaging materials with properties like heat insulation, aroma retention, enhanced strength, and moisture proofing. There is also a rise identified in the smaller bags segments where flexible, pouch bags are being manufactured.

The induction of intelligent and active packaging systems in the beverage industry has created a domino effect leading to the growth of the sector in the global market. The industry has made peace with the new disruptive intelligent systems that are called “the packaging which senses and reports.” These intelligent systems manufacture packaging products at a quick pace. The systems have not only achieved maximum security but has also retained the nutritional values of beverages. The active packaging also allows the shelf-life extension of the product by employing numerable methods like oxygen scavengers, moisture absorbers, antioxidants, and anti-microbial agents.

2. The Autonomous Packaging Process:

The wings of automation have widespread over several industrial areas, one among them being the food and beverage packaging industry. Most of the processes involved in the beverage processing and packaging systems have been automated. The manufacturer can then centralize the operations without causing any significant impact on the product quality and the uniformity. With no human intervention and tasks being fulfilled with a single tap on the screen, automation at large scale is becoming the norm for the industry. Processes like depalletizing, primary, secondary, tertiary packaging, and unpacking are the front row witnesses of the automation technology.

In the bottling industry, especially the process of filling the bottles, automation in quality control (QC) inspection can be executed. The process involves inspection of the materials that are to be filled in and checked post-filling as well. With the integration of automation systems, the necessity of workers individually lifting the bottle from the assembly line to crosscheck it is completely avoided. With the automation systems, the bottles can be inspected while online as the process of filling occurs. The only backfire of the automation systems is the requirement of highly trained labor.

3. Switching to Eco-Friendly Mode:

The replacement for the environment harming, non-biodegradable plastics in the packaging industry is the bioplastics, biodegradable polymers that can be recycled much easier and quicker than conventional plastics. The evolution of bioplastics arose from the need to replace polymers with a sustainable, eco-friendly, and less damaging material. These materials were innovated from substances derived from natural sources like sugarcane, potatoes, seashells, corn, bacteria, and starch. The bio-polymers have identified applications in almost every field, but most prominently as general utility commodity from bottle and cups to chip bags and coffee mugs. Since bioplastics possess no harmful chemicals within the materials, the carbon footprint of both the packaging manufacturer and the product itself is decreasing drastically.

The main contributor to the growth of the bioplastics in the industry is the heightened emphasis on environmental sustainability, which often results in the reduction of petroleum-based product consumption. Bioplastics, including PHA and PLA, are biodegradable; the products like bio-PET and bio-PE are not easily degradable, even though it is biosourced.

The utilization of bioplastics is being encouraged by major regulatory bodies and codes of standards to reduce the carbon footprint in the industry worldwide substantially. Many companies have now taken up the task of manufacturing bioplastics from agricultural processing waste. These rejects contain polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), which is 100 percent biodegradable.

4. Integration of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by Large Companies:

The majority of global conglomerates have begun to acquire smaller, dedicated vendors and manufacturers. Equipped with the latest technologies and machinery to produce a good quality product all under one roof, the conglomerates train the laborers and integrate the pieces of the process. The outcome of these actions is the production of a one-stop-shop solution for the industries across the beverage industry value chain.

The consequence of the acquisitions on the food and beverage industry is expected to be remarkable. The large one-stop-shops will not only accelerate the production but also has the capacities to manufacture the packaging materials, which are bio-degradable and eco-friendly.

With the conglomerates backing the integrated unit, there is less chaos and more organized production, uniformity is maintained, and initiatives like these will reduce the carbon footprint as well.