Josh Brooks: The year’s most depressing day? Rubbish

Apparently, yesterday was the most depressing day of the year. But was it? Here at PN Towers we cheered ourselves up by inviting some of our friends around the industry to enjoy a New Year cocktail and to reflect on the last 12 months and the year to come.

What was great was that everyone was so upbeat (a sugar rush from the sweets on offer probably helped). And it was genuine, enthusiastic upbeat – not talking up a bad lot.

So while there’s been some bad news in the first couple of weeks of the year, with the collapse of Western Corrugated and The Packaging Factory, there’s also a general sense of the industry being up for it in 2010.

So how is this manifesting itself?

Well, designers told me they are snowed under getting proposals out. The food industry’s benefitting from extra sales thanks to the ‘staycation’ trend – as one food manufacturer told me last night: “Families spending an extra week at home rather than on a foreign holiday will add 2% to sales – how else can you get that sort of growth in a mature market?”.

Packaging manufacturers, meanwhile, are really looking hard for the next big innovations. It’s all great to hear and bodes well for all of us in the year to come.

Depressing? Not in the least. Perhaps we’re all high on the ‘It’s not 2009′ factor. But I hope not. Here’s to packaging’s positivity lasting and growing into 2010.

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