The recent 29th Congress of the European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers centered on co-operation and how to grow the corrugated business while retaining one’s specificities.
According to Pira’s Ann Sterling-Roberts, more collaboration will be one characteristic of the future supply chain; innovation and niche markets will be the others. Wim Hoebert, secretary general of FEFCO, presented the new S3 Corrugated Packaging Initiative led by the FEFCO S3 task force, and whose aim is to provide a co-ordinated industry approach and to undertake a number of activities to challenge competing materials, and their growing market share.
Two recent studies, one in Germany and one in Spain, compared the economic and environmental characteristics of corrugated trays and plastics crates in the transport of goods. Angelika Christ, of VDW the German Association of Corrugated Board Manufacturers, released figures that showed a clear cost advantage to the corrugated board tray in a number of scenarios.
The conclusions of Mercedes Hortal, of ITENE (Packaging, Transport & Logistics Retail Institute), Spain, were clear: “In the long distance transport of fruit and vegetables corrugated board boxes have less environmental impact than foldable plastics crates in most of the cases considered. The climate change impact is also lower in the case of corrugated board, and of course the issues of cleaning and transporting plastics crates back and forth play against that choice.”
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