Packing versus Covid 19

Mar 01, 2020

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We receive and gladly publish the open letter of an entrepreneur in our sector who, at the time of the Corona virus, reflects on the importance of "teaming up" in companies, but above all takes the opportunity to reaffirm the reasons, all positive, of packaging. A fine example of resilience, or of that «ability to cope with traumatic events in a positive way, to positively reorganize one's life in the face of difficulties». A capacity which, we hope, can be of many. Stefano Lavorini

Dear Director,

... A week has passed, only a week even if it seems much longer, since the "corona virus" broke out in Italy. A week in which we citizens of the north have found ourselves paralyzed by fear, and desperately seeking information, food, facemasks and hand gels. Fluid days and lost looks in some people’s eyes; due for some to their being stranded at home by the quarantine and some by the fomented and perhaps not even really justified panic.
History will tell us if it was a question of something having been underestimated beforehand or magnified afterwards, yet, in these days I have learned something important on a personal and business level: the employees of Laminati Cavanna SpA form a great team.

We are proud to be from Piacenza, an Emilian city near the Lombard border; so close to Codogno but outside the "red zone", we ended up at the center of the problem. We have shown that we are responsible people, who care about their work, who have not even missed a single day, showing ourselves ready to adapt to changes in timetables and directives.
I greatly appreciate this demonstration of faith and optimism, this flexibility that characterizes us.
Committed every day for 50 years to laminating packaging, mainly in the food sector, we have not ceased to guarantee our service to customers and have respected schedules, forecasts and deliveries.

Perhaps in these agitated days the institutions, journalists and consumers have also been able to appreciate packaging, which allows you to find food in a perfect state of freshness, safety, preservation, enabling its fruition and transport.

Even all the personal protective equipment, so important these days for doctors, nurses, operators, made of plastic materials, TNT or PVC, has truly served a purpose and has not merely been considered as pollutants of the seas or the environment.
The important thing is that they served their purpose - to protect, defend and safeguard people - and that they were then disposed of in the correct way.
I am thinking of the lab coats, the facemasks, the shoes and overshoes, the gloves, protective suits, syringes, drip-feeds, the pharmaceutical blister packs, but also the PET bottles, the cold cut trays, the pasta, the fruit and vegetable packs.
Perhaps "consumers" have learned to look at packaging with different eyes, compared to the obtusely "against" campaign of recent months.

We in the flexible packaging industry have always been committed to ensuring that packaging is safe, hygienic, practical and also pleasing to the eye; this following years of studies, exams, tests, research and development in compliance with the regulations and quality and hygiene certifications.

There is still much to be done to make packaging better, more recyclable, reusable and "sustainable" and with less impact on the environment. In my opinion people need to acknowledge and recognize packaging for all its worth, do a proper segregated collection, implement recovery systems, encourage new technologies and new solutions ... and stop demonizing it.
Plastic should not be seen as "an enemy" but must be used consciously and responsibly in all sectors - food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, industrial - for which plastic is not a waste but a resource.

Packaging "extends the life of food": this is not a slogan but a truth that one must have the courage and strength to explain and demonstrate for the good of everybody.

We have not stopped working these days, we have analysed the risks and implemented all the necessary measures in compliance with the directives and for this I thank all our co-workers for having once again proved themselves to be a great team.