WPO Members Participate In International Events Promoting The Importance Of Packaging

Between February and April 2018, some WPO (World Packaging Organization; worldpackaging.org) members are participating in exhibitions and seminars, representing the Organization and promoting the importance of packaging. At PlastIndia 2018 (February 7-12 – Gujarat state, Western region of India), the Director of the Indian Institute of Packaging, Dr. N. C. Saha, a very active Board Member of WPO, organized the WPO Save Food area. Prolonging the model from Interpack 2017, the area presented solutions on packaging to prevent food waste. 18 WPO members – Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, South Africa, Spain, The Netherlands, UK, USA, APO (African Packaging Organization) and APF (Asian Packaging Federation) were represented in the Innovation area at PlastIndia.

According to WPO President, Pierre Pienaar, Save Food is an issue related to the whole supply chain. “There are many ways and technologies to work on this, including logistics, farm to fork, transcontinental routings, transit refrigeration, storage conditions, shelf life extension, product handling, and more. Packaging plays an important role and it is the key element that WPO is focusing being part of the Save Food project, an initiative from Messe Düsseldorf and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”

WPO was also represented in another event in India, the CII National Packaging Conference 2018 (February 09 – 10, Chennai). At this occasion, WPO Ambassador, Chakravarthi AVPS, reinforced the importance of packaging and the importance of having a structure like WPO working on packaging education programs around the world. “This conference aimed to serve as a platform for sharing knowledge, business and technology identification, create awareness among the end-users and consumers on current trends in packaging, understand from experts, industrial, government and key stakeholders on the best practices, global standards and emerging norms in packaging, support industries in adoption of advanced technology and unique ideas, and forging partnerships for collaborative business and research amongst industries, institutions, innovators etc.”

The next event in which WPO will be represented is the 2^nd Latin American Summit on Innovation in Plastic Packaging (April 18 – 19 – Mexico city). WPO General Secretary, Johannes Bergmair (Austria) and WPO Vice President of Marketing, Luciana Pellegrino (Brazil), will be speakers. The titles of their presentations are, respectively, “World innovative plastics packaging that fights hunger, reduces food waste and improve social conditions” and “Innovating in packaging in the context of circular economy”. For more information about this future event, visit cumbreenvases.com.