The power of four

Walk into any trade show and the chances are you’ll stumble on to the biggest exhibitor’s stand before you’ve even had a chance to take your bearings – or see anyone else. But not at Easyfairs’ annual packaging jamboree.

In 2005, the show organiser, which styles itself as the events industry’s equivalent of a low-cost airline, brought a new concept to the packaging trade show circuit. At Easyfairs shows, almost every stand is the same size, and costs are standard.

So whether the exhibitor is a multinational, billion-pound business or a family-owned contract packer with 20 staff, they get the same exposure.

In the four years since Easyfairs first hit the UK, the concept has taken hold. This year’s event, which takes place on 11-12 February at the NEC, will host more than 400 exhibitors across four shows: Ecopack, focusing on environmental packaging; Contract Pack, where co-packers will exhibit their wares; Packtech, showcasing packaging technology; and Packaging Innovations, where brand consultants and designers rub shoulders with materials and technology firms offering a glimpse of packaging’s next big thing.

It’s a lot to take in over just two days, but there’s more – the event also hosts one of the year’s fullest seminar programmes in its Learnshops theatres. This year, packaging buyers, designers and manufacturers from some of the biggest supermarkets and brand owners on the block, including Asda, Beatson Clark, Tesco and Unilever, are set to speak.

Expert advice
Visitors can also bring their own packaging along for scrutiny. The Waste & Resources Action Programme and Envirowise are running workshops within Ecopack to offer advice on potential materials and carbon savings in the design.

But with the poor economic climate at the top of everyone’s agenda, many exhibitors are set to place an emphasis on products that will save cost or resources. Peter Heath, managing director of Easyfairs UK, argues that the economic crisis is making the show more relevant than ever.

In terms of design and innovation, Heath says that brands see packaging as even more important in the marketing mix when times are tough because spending on advertising is often the first part of the budget to be cut. On the production side, he adds, converters and other manufacturers are looking at how to reduce costs in-house or to outsource, so the type of technology on show at PackTech and the outsourcers at Contract Pack should help with that drive.

Heath’s views are borne out by the findings in the annual Packaging News-Easyfairs survey of brand owners, which were first published last month. The survey showed that even as the downturn takes hold, a growing proportion of brand owners see packaging as “invaluable” to their business – 83% this year compared to 79% last year.

Visitor numbers at this year’s show will be another indicator of packaging’s place in a struggling economy. With top names both on the exhibitor and speaker lists, Easyfairs will be looking to beat last year’s figure of 3,925 visitors. But Heath isn’t daunted. “I’m confident we’ll build on the success of the last show,” he says.

LEARN SHOPS
Easyfairs’ packaging show will again play host to one of the industry’s biggest programmes of seminars and debates, with more than 80 presentations promised over the two days. Full schedules are available at www.easyfairs.com/piuk, but here are some of the highlights:

Learnshop 1 – Packaging News
11 February
Current trends in packaging innovations Josh Brooks, editor, Packaging News and Peter Heath, managing director, Easyfairs
Failed innovations: packs that didn’t work Robert Herridge, managing director, Packology

12 February
Sustainable packaging innovation – a brand owner’s view Steph Carter, packaging sustainability director, Unilever
New packaging: what retailers want Sonia Raja, senior packaging buyer, Tesco

Learnshop 2 – Design Futures
11 February
Packaging design: If I knew then what I know now
David Myerson, MD, Hurricane Design
Design ideas for innovative packaging John Kirkby, creative director, Design Futures, Sheffield Hallam University

12 February
Making emotional connections with package design Sean O’Connor, director, client services, Smart Design
Openability: an issue coming of age
Dr Alaster Yoxall, principal research fellow, Human Centred Engineering Group, Sheffield Hallam University

Learnshop 3 – The Brand Summit
11 February
The Clash and the Klondike kid Jonathan Sands, chairman, Elmwood Design
The ‘Credit Crunch’ versus the green agenda Henry Emblem, The Packaging Society

12 February
Award-winning design brings out the best in Oxo Lynn Sidebottom, sales and marketing director, and Alan Haigh, design manager, Beatson Clark
Finding your way through the environmental fog
Steve Kelsey, director, PI3

Packaging Innovations
Arguably the most important of Easyfairs’ four co-located shows, Packaging Innovations focuses on primary packaging and giving packs the best shelf stand-out possible. Designers and brand consultants will show off their wares alongside packaging and technology suppliers to an audience of brand owners, marketing managers and retailers. Products on show promise to cover the food and drink, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, petrochemicals and entertainment sectors and a host of packs and services are set to make their UK debut at the show. These will include a new aluminium wine closure that controls the level of oxidation of wine from Croxsons; invisible labels for tinplate containers from Springfield Solutions; and CM Packaging’s new ‘comfort lift’ concept for cigar packaging.

Key exhibitors
Benson Group, Burgopak, Catalent, Chesapeake, Korsnas, Rexam, Tetra Pak, Smurfit Kappa, Sun Chemical

Star of the show
Easibind will unveil a new 3D print process which combines lenticular print with flexible polypropylene and gives the impression of depth without the need for a lens material. The process can be used on all types of packaging and is just 550 microns thick.

Don’t miss
Arkadian Flexible plans to use the show to launch
a beverage bag for soft-drink vending machines that will fill on-demand before being capped and dispensed.

Packtech
Packtech’s 100 exhibitors come from the food processing and packaging technology sector and the show aims to give plant managers the chance to see how they can save time and cost with the help of the latest technology on the market. Labelling kit, coding and marking machines, sealing systems and colour management software are among the products taking centre stage in this show, alongside pallets, conveyors, winders and a head-spinning mix of every other element of a packing line. Like Packaging Innovations, Packtech has attracted an international range of exhibitors, with firms from Holland, Germany and elsewhere presenting their products at the show.

Key exhibitors
Advanced Labelling Systems, Datalase, Markem-Imaje, Pillar Technologies, Total Colour Management, Sauven Marking

Star of the show
CDI Worldwide is expected to turn heads with an intriguing ‘in-box’ shrink-wrap system that eliminates the need for void fill. Boxes are filled with a special material and then passed through a shrink tunnel, firmly securing the objects inside. It’s already in use in the US, but this will be its first public showing in the UK.

Don’t miss
German firm Arpack is making its first appearance at Packtech and will be showing high-density polystyrene pallets that weigh less than 4kg and are able to carry up to a tonne of product when on the move, or three tonnes when static.

Contract Pack
Contract Pack made its debut at last year’s Easyfairs event and has proved popular again this year with the members of the British Contract Manufacturers & Packers Association (BCMPA) who exhibit – so much so that places were already sold out by December. At the show, more than 30 contract packers will showcase the spectrum of services they have to offer, including design, blister and clam packing, shrink-wrapping, labelling, point-of-sale displays, warehousing, distribution and much more. Exhibitors work in a range of industries including pharmaceuticals, food and drink, chemicals, toiletries and cosmetics.

Key exhibitors
AE Adams, BCMPA, Chester Medical Solutions, Newgate Simms, Premier Labellers, Safapac, Wincanton Group

Star of the show

Premier Labellers will be showing a new innovation where it has managed to replicate the appearance of a label applied to a metal can with wet glue using a self-adhesive label. Director Tracie White explains that using self-adhesive labels is less messy than wet glue and offers shorter changeover times with less makeready. Self-adhesive labels can also mask dents in the can.

Don’t miss
Wincanton Group is a name more likely to be associated with thundering lorries than with packaging, but
the firm is one of a number of logistics companies making the leap into fulfilment and packaging. The company is at the show to explain why.

Ecopack
There’s no let-up in the push for packaging, like many other areas of modern industry, to go green. Ecopack launched last year at the Easyfairs show and returns for a second edition in 2009 with support from three of the organisations at the heart of the environmental push: Wrap, Envirowise and the National Non-Food Crop Centre. Compostable food films and additives that make plastics oxo-biodegradable, seen by many in the industry as controversial, are likely to attract the lion’s share of attention. But, as we all know, there’s more to the green debate than that. Lightweighted glass bottles, self-shrinking labels and closures and eco-friendly packaging for delicate products will all be on display.

Key exhibitors
Beatson Clark, Clarifoil, Dufaylite, Easypack, Fedrigoni UK, the Green Pallet Company, Innovia Films, Wrap Star of the showViscose Closures will showcase its new Viskrings cellulose-based closure, which self-shrinks simply through natural drying rather than requiring heat. The innovation from the firm, which specialises in decorative and protective shrink labels for bottles and food closures, will get its first show outing at Ecopack.

Don’t miss
Marchant will take on the ongoing plastic bag debate by showcasing its vegetable-starch derived bags which, it claims, can be home-composted in just six weeks.

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