Growing global demand for plastic packaging has been prompting the plastic packaging manufacturers
to use more and more additives and barrier coatings for such packaging. Industry forecast is 23% growth of their use by the end of 2015.
Plastic packaging has always been one of the most important parts of retail and daily market. People all over the world have been using such packages for storage and transport of numerous articles. More than others, they have been used extensively for packaging in domestic use. Slowly but steadily, they have also been occupying a significant portion of the commercial world.
Global demands for the plastic packaging are constantly on the growth. Such trends in the market have prompted the plastic packaging manufacturers to extensively use items like additives and barriers for such packaging. Immense popularity of these items is evident from the fact that the industry foresees that there would be an annual growth over 4% in the packaging industry. Some of the surveyors assess the growth to reach $752 million by 2015.
Growth in the barrier and additives would vary a bit. It is expected that growth in the barrier coating sector could be 4.6%, annually while such growth in the additive sector would be a little lower at around 3.9%. However, the combined average predicted growth of 4.3% annually would be still higher for the plastic packaging market.
Some of the segments in the packaging industry that are likely to dominate the future and the procurements made by the plastic packaging manufacturers are things like epoxy, carbon, PVOH, and Silicon Oxide (SiOx) that would account for no less than 62% of the packaging sector in the market. And the major part of the sector is the food packaging industry. It can also be termed as the largest group of end users.
An important part of the packaging industry is the packaging technologies controlling the permeation of gases. Carbon dioxide and oxygen, water vapors, flavors as well as aromas help to prepare high quality plastic packaging covering multiple consumer commodities. Health and hygiene is also important. Of late, there has been great deal of discussions and debates on the evil impacts of the plastic packages and packets on the environment all over the world.
Trends that are influencing the growth of the packaging industry include the global recession that was affecting the entire industry for the last 18 months or more. Some of the sophisticated packaging such as the snacks, confectionaries as well as ready meals has all suffered drop in the sales. Natural consequences of all these were a negative impact on the demands for all types of functional additives as well as barrier coatings.
Hopefully, these trends would be history soon! Greater demands for barrier coated PET bottles are likely to come up in the near future with the demands for quality plastic packaging on the growth. One of the reasons is that, there is hardly an equally inexpensive or quality substitute for the packaging. In fact, the requirements for need enhanced barrier coatings and additives will result in the plastic packaging manufacturers getting a boost with advancement of new technologies and relative ease of recycling of packaging materials.
By Vaiv Jais
