Mintel announces five global packaging trends for 2018

Mintel, a leading market intelligence agency, has announced five trends set to impact the global packaging industry over the coming year:  

1. Packaged Planet: A focus on package innovations that extend food freshness, preserve ingredient fortification, and ensure safe delivery is increasingly benefiting consumers. Brands will need to act fast by exploiting on-pack communication tools to educate consumers to the benefits packaging can bring, from extending shelf life of food to providing efficient and safe access to essential products in developed and underserved regions of the world.
2. rEpackage: Online shopping is becoming increasingly widespread around the globe and is near ubiquitous in some markets. When designing packaging to be viewed online, and transit packaging to be opened upon delivery in the home, the experience of e-commerce packaging must reflect consumer expectations from shopping with that brand in-store.
3. Clean Label 2.0: Today’s consumers are more informed than ever; however, brands are in real danger of being rejected if consumers feel overloaded with information, leading to the questioning of provenance, authenticity, and transparency. Brands must bring the next generation of clean label to packaging design to provide a moment of calm and clarity for shoppers in an increasingly hectic retail environment.
4. Sea Change: Concerns over safe packaging disposal will increasingly color consumers’ perceptions of different packaging types, and impact shopper purchase decisions. While collecting waste plastic from the sea to recycle into new packaging can raise consumer awareness, it won’t solve the problem. In order to keep plastic out of the sea, a renewed effort toward the circular economy is needed to keep packaging material in use.
5. rEnavigate: Young shoppers are increasingly “shopping the periphery,” visiting the fresh and chilled aisles around the store perimeter and turning their backs on processed, ambient, and frozen offerings in the center of the store. The use of transparent materials, contemporary design, recyclability, or unique shapes can help draw in younger consumers to the store center.

“Our packaging trends for 2018 reflect the most current and forward-looking consumer attitudes, actions, and purchasing behaviors in both global and local markets,” said David Luttenberger, global packaging director at Mintel. “Such trends as those we see emerging in e-commerce packaging have stories that are just now being written. Others, such as the attack on plastics, are well into their third or even fourth chapters, but with no clear ending in sight. It is those backstories and future-forward implications that position Mintel’s 2018 Packaging Trends as essential to retailer, brand, and package converter strategies during the coming year and beyond.”

Press release