Giflex project

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS What are the strategies for planning a successful (and plausible) future for the sector? What are the essential reasons for communicating the value of packaging? What new developments have there been in the concept of environmental sustainability and its intimate connection with respect for consumers and their safety? And what opportunities arise from the relationship between industry and academia? These are some of the many questions on the table at the 27th fall congress of Giflex, Assografici’s flexible packaging group, which, in accordance with tradition, managed to offer concrete possibilities for delving deepe. Stefano Lavorini

Rome. The Giflex fall congress. After numerous speeches... the room goes dark. Some images begin to flash on the screen, in short time provoking astonishment among the spectators that quickly turns into perturbation. With a technique and sound effects reminiscent of early Eisenstein, from the video emerges a threat that has a first and a last name: Flexible Packaging. A pervasive, “eco-unfriendly” packaging, and thus one that conjures up anxieties over pollution more than a balanced and serene idea of protection.

This is the forceful, challenging message of the film “Life in a refrigerator” made by a 15-year-old girl who won the contest organized by Giflex as part of its awareness promotion activities in schools. The jury decreed that the prize was awarded on the basis of the originality of the idea, its capacity for and effectiveness in transmitting the messages, with its creativity and technique as a bonus.

Kudos to Giflex, especially its president Pietro Lironi, for having the courage to present a “resistance” film, intelligently evaluated as a challenge to do more and do better, first and foremost by listening to and respecting the voice of young people, the true protagonists of the future. What’s more, the objective of the encounter, declared from the outset of the work carried out in Rome on October 11th-12th, 2012, was completely coherent: a new willingness to engage with opponents in order to arrive at a greater transparency in communication with consumers concerning the value of packaging. Below, some of the issues addressed. For Luigi Nicolais’s talk on research and innovation, see the article that follows.

The value of packaging. Fabrizio Gerosa of the marketing committee illustrated the course of the project carried out by Giflex during the last 3 years, with the objective of promoting the value of food packaging and their sensitivity to eco-sustainability and recycling. Then, starting with the problems, a plan was laid out for a communication campaign targeting the media - by drafting of a communication dossier, setting up a digital magazine (Eco_Pack), organizing five interactive events (yellow food only lunches) for 50 journalists - as well as the government, key opinion formers and retailers, for whom special events have been designated.

The third phase of the congress consisted in “one to one” encounters with representatives of Federalimentare, the Italian national consumers union, Legambiente and Amsa, not to mention activities for schools, in which 1,500 students from 20 secondary schools. This effort included the publication of an informational toolkit called iPack and a contest awarding the best video by a student, inspired by the themes taught during the lessons.
Has highlighted by Riccardo Ceresa of the Sprim company, the goal was that of making young people understand how flexible packaging is a resource, rather than a threat, for the environment. During the lessons, teachers were joined for three hours by environmental sustainability experts who supplied a precious aide by drawing a conceptual map of topics relating to packaging and sustainability.

The industry’s point of view. Simone Zucchetti (Amadori) addressed the audience about the sustainability and value of packaging for the food industry. In particular, he pointed out that consumers have less and less time to buy groceries, and that they often can’t find what they really need because it involves processing too much information. They want to avoid waste, and they choose products with increasingly quick preparation times. And although awareness of sustainability issues is on the rise, it is necessary to “do the sums”: considering the energy footprint of the food sector, in fact, most of it goes to producing the raw materials, storage at home and cooking. These three parameters alone represent 80% of the energy footprint, while packaging accounts for less than 10%: basically, the expanded polystyrene tray “costs” 350 grams of CO2, while a chicken costs 4,000.

The logical consequence is that packaging should first of all safeguard the value of the product, and conversely, reduce waste.
A product’s packaging should thus be a system, made using the best materials and the least amount of material possible, capable of offering maximum service performance. In terms of sustainability, Zucchetti goes on to suggest, one can’t only consider the quantities of material used, but the type of material, to be chosen according to the mode of storage and preparation (for example offering individually packaged sliced chicken breasts, or using an aluminium tray for faster cooking.

The hopes of retailers. Motivated by the report of its 2,500 members, Giovanni Panzeri explained that at Conad they are working on making the supermarket’s packaging more efficient and environmentally sustainable.
For Conad, packaging means 240 million grocery bags each year, as well as 340 million paper bags for bread, 100 million polystyrene trays, 9 million PVC reels, 630 million price/weight labels.
But even more important are the numbers relating to Conad-brand products and their packaging, which «are as much a source of differentiation as of growth. Since we’re not producers, we have a very long supply chain: we operate in 215 product categories, 1800 references, 357 suppliers, excluding those for fresh products. We monitor 530 facilities with 600 printers, and we use approximately 68 different types of packaging material. For this reason, we are in need of a renewal in the direction of sustainability, from the ground up».

The problem, according to Panzeri, is to understand how to avoid waste, keeping in mind that the consumer is more attentive to domestic waste than to C02 output.
Conad expects its co-packers to find a way to innovate, starting with the assumption that it isn’t always possible to add costs to a product. In any case, this expectation also involves packaging manufacturers, who should be able to help Conad’s suppliers to find in short time new and more efficient solutions, not necessarily more economical, but with greater value all things considered.