It is time to submit your abstract to present your research at the 24th IAPRI World Packaging Conference to be held next June in Valencia, Spain

The IAPRI Active and Intelligent Packaging Community of Practice has changed it name and focus to Food Packaging. This was approved by the Board of Directors at the request of the Chair Selcuk Yildirim from Zhaw University following their meeting in May at the World Conference in Mumbai.

The International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) Educational Foundation today announced it has awarded three $4,500 undergraduate research grants for proposals focused on minimizing product damage throughout distribution and optimizing resource usage through effective package design.

Researchers from Michigan State University’s top-ranked School of Packaging have developed a way to make a promising, sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics more biodegradable. A team led by Rafael Auras has made a bio-based polymer blend that’s compostable in both home and industrial settings.

As part of its two-day Sonoco FRESH Food, Packaging and Sustainability Summit this month, a Clemson University audience heard how PepsiCo is pursuing a range of packaging sustainability strategies across its food and beverage portfolio, rather than prioritizing particular approaches or material types over others.

Research from Sweden’s Lund University has underlined the important role that packaging plays in consumer-centric last-mile home delivery logistics, but also the ways in which many of our assumptions about it need to be rethought.

Every researcher would like to see their work helping to improve best practice, either through industry standards or adapted test protocols and, as the Distribution Packaging papers at IAPRI’s May 2023 Conference made clear, insights into potential improvements are plentiful.

As the focus on renewable raw materials for packaging intensifies, there is a growing need to find more consistent and accurate ways of testing paper and board to ensure compliance with regulations and to evaluate potential migration into food.

One of the organizations to have joined IAPRI most recently, corporate member and international business Constantia Flexibles is divided into two divisions – Pharma and Consumer - and has extensive R&D operations at both group and division level.

I am sorry if you were not able to attend, but you really missed a wonderful few days in Navi Mumbai. It was fabulous to experience the feeling of IAPRI members coming together once again to share our research, our stories from the past few years and really enjoying seeing old friends and meeting new ones.