Roger Thomson, Head of Innovation at Cepac, discusses developments in packaging for online retail:

“2019 showed good growth across many sectors including e-commerce. Cepac are an essential supplier to sectors such as food and healthcare and as such we have continued production all throughout year. The Covid 19 pandemic hit everyone hard, we adapted quickly, adopted suitable safe working practices to protect our employees, secured our supply chain and managed our customers ongoing requirements carefully. If anything, we feel that we are now even closer to our customers and throughout this crisis we have remained very much open for business.

“For us, we see e-commerce retailing as a particular growth opportunity. The pandemic has significantly brought forward the shift away from the instore retail experience to the more remote online purchase. This creates further e-commerce opportunities. We have continued our market development throughout the recent months. Our development work looking at coating technology on paper is particularly exciting and already moving us into new markets and this will progress throughout the year.

“Complementing our leading position in Litho and HD Flexo, Cepac remains active in looking at Digital Print technology and its application to the market. We must also consider the changing retail environment - some of those changes of course have happened very recently.

“Sustainability, including recycling and even composting is key when offering online retail solutions. Paper based packaging solutions are the way forward for many sustainable environmental reasons.

“Our business focus and strategy has always centered on Performance Packaging and ensuring we produce the optimal pack for the product and supply chain. That is also the case in e-commerce. We are focused on replacing multi-product and substrate packaging to improve overall sustainability.

“Generally, the feedback that we’re hearing from customers is that their current priority is the trusted security of a robust quality supply chain and this has been very much the case throughout the pandemic. However, the requirement for innovative and sustainable products remains our core theme moving forward.

“We have seen various paper-based packaging solutions supported by new coating technology push the boundaries this year. These innovations are demonstrating that corrugated materials can offer a true environmentally friendly alternative to traditional plastic-based packaging solutions.”

To find out more about the latest innovations in packaging, for e-commerce and other sectors, contact Roger Thomson Roger.Thomson@cepac.co.uk

 Excerpts from this article appeared in the July/August edition of Packaging News, which can be viewed in full, by visiting: https://www.packagingnews.co.uk/features/online-opportunity-supplier-analysis-corrugated-07-08-2020