Market Trends of United Kingdom Packaging Industry
Food Segment Expected to Drive Market Growth
- The increasing demand for processed food and the growing adoption of lightweight, flexible packaging drive the market, with varying impacts over the short, medium, and long term. The market for frozen food packaging is witnessing an upsurge due to the country's consumer appreciation of product quality. The demand for frozen food packaging has increased in the United Kingdom due to changing lifestyles.
- The country's food manufacturers are increasingly replacing plastic-based products in line with their paper-based counterparts for sustainability, which is expected to fuel the market’s growth. For instance, in September 2023, Mondi, a global leader in sustainable packaging and paper, launched paper-packed dry rice in the United Kingdom for the first time by collaborating with award-winning rice supplier Veetee, showing the market’s growth in the food packaging segment.
- Stand-up pouches are anticipated to become a standard form of packaging throughout the forecast period due to their capacity to maintain the freshness of food products and increase product shelf life. Furthermore, the pouches also offer a great visible aesthetic, which adds to the product's marketing benefits. This has led to the wide adoption of pouches as a stable alternative to other formats and is expected to take further momentum in terms of demand and customer acceptance during the forecast period.
- In the United Kingdom, sustainability and recyclability play a significant role in raising consumer preference for brands. Responding to the expanded market demand for post-consumer recycled (PCR) packaging solutions, a flexible packaging company, ProAmpac, announced the launch of its ProActivePCR Retort pouches. The retort pouches are intended for pet and human food packaging and are both FDA and EU-compliant for food contact in retort applications. They provide packaging with a post-consumer recycled (PCR) content of 30% or more, minimizing the use of virgin resins. These inventive pouches also adhere to United Kingdom Plastics Packaging Tax regulations (PPT).
- The percentage change in annual internet food sales has reached a pre-pandemic level after a significant increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has raised consumer behavior to prefer online ordering of foods. In December 2023, Eviosys relaunched Eviosys's R&D center in Wantage, Oxfordshire, to become the food industry's sustainable packaging partner of choice, which shows the demand for the market in the country.
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PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) Expected to Hold Major Market Share
- Plastic bottles are widely used in various industries in the United Kingdom due to the beverage companies' growing use of recyclable plastics. The food and beverage market is one of the major users of plastic bottles and containers. The rising use of PET bottles drives the country's plastic bottle market due to their low cost and lightweight in various end-user applications, including food, beverage, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
- Furthermore, newer filling technologies and the development of heat-resistant PET bottles provided new possibilities and options in the market. While PET bottles are standard in multiple segments, beverages, cosmetics, sanitary products, and detergents are largely sold in polyethylene (PE) bottles, which is supporting the market’s growth in the country.
- PET plastic materials sustain high demand from FMCG brand owners in the United Kingdom. In May 2024, the recycling technology firm Polytag named the UK retailer M&S as a founding member of its Polytag Ecotrace Programme, an initiative set to optimize the tracing and recycling of single-use plastic packaging in the United Kingdom. The Polytag Ecotrace Programme would deploy a vast network of Polytag’s invisible UV tag detection equipment in strategically chosen recycling centers that handle high volumes of waste, which would support the recycled PET bottles in the country.
- The market has been registering advancements in the design of bottles to make them easy to load onto pallets and transport to supermarkets, which shows the demand for PET bottles in the market. For instance, in March 2024, Aldi in the United Kingdom launched its own-brand flat recycled PET wine bottles, which it said are made from 100% recycled PET, showing the market's future growth potential.
- The Office for National Statistics (United Kingdom) reported that consumer spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages in the United Kingdom has been increasing, which would support the demand for bottle packaging and fuel PET adoptions in line with the demand for recyclable PET and the advantage of PET material in beverage packaging.
