The Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) organized the National Conference on Innovations in Plastics for Packaging on April 26 at The Leela hotel in Mumbai. The event saw a packed house with more than 200 delegates in attendance. There were 17 speakers who talked on issues such as innovations in polymer for packaging application, development of additives for packaging application, innovations in flexible plastics in packaging, and new generation of rigid plastics in packaging and testing and quality evaluations. Shardul Sharma reports.
Plastics as youknow play a huge role in packaging. Since a long timewedidnotorganize any conference on plastics. We thought of getting together as many stalwarts of the industry to discuss about various in- novations that have happened in the world of plastics. India has come a long way in the last decade in terms of innova- tion in packaging. The objective of this one-day seminar is to disseminate infor- mationonthe state-of-the-art technology and innovations in the field of plastics in packaging withrespect to materials, con- verting machinery, systems andtesting aspects,” NC Saha, director, IIP said.
Saha added that the Indian packag- ing industry is headed for rapid growth by the end of this decade. “The indus- try is constantly growing at the rate of 13 to 15% which is almost three times more than the global growth rate of the packaging industry which is about 5 to 6%. Due to this, it is expected that by 2020, the turnover should reach to US$ 32 billion. It is reported that about 50% of consumption of packaging material is from plastic where the annual aver- age growth rate of flexible packaging material is about 20% to 25% and the rigid plastic container mainly PET alone is growing at the rate of 35%. It is very interesting to mention here that over the last two decades, the con- sumption of plastic materials has su- perseded all other materials as the growth rate of other packaging materi- als is quite low as compared to plastics, for example, paper board is growing at the rate of 12 to 15%, metal at 8%, and glass at 6%,” Saha said.
In addition to other speakers, the opening session was also addressed by Ashok Misra, former director, IIT who said, “Plastics have a major contribu- tion, to the tune of 50% of the total packaging industry, amongst all pack-
aging materials in the country. In to- day’s knowledge-driven society, inno- vation holds the key to building knowl- edge capital.”
The first session was dedicated to in- novations in polymer for packaging ap- plication. Debasish Roy of GAIL India talked about developments in poly- meric material while Suvomoy Gangu- ly of Haldia Petrochemicals spoke about the recent trend in polymeric ma- terial. Anup Bagchi of Reliance Indus- tries spoke about the new generation PET packaging. Two other speakers in the first session were Robin Banerjee from Caprihans and Ashwin Patel from BASF who spoke about new vistas in plastics and packaging and protection, performance, and preservation of pack- aging solutions.
During the second session the top- ic under discussion was development of additives for packaging application. This first speaker was Ashish Pradhan of Henkel who spoke about the latest development of adhesives for flexible laminate. Francis Rodrigues of Plas- tiblends India educated the audience about the improvements in master batches for packaging applications. This session was concluded by Baldev Raj of Luibeg Environmental Tech- nologies who spoke about biodegrad- able and oxo biodegradable additives for eco-friendly packaging.
The third session dealt with innova- tions in flexible plastics in packaging. Rakesh Shah of Windmöller & Hölscher India talked about critical aspects of pro- cessing of a multi-layer film for packag- ing application. Shahwas followedby MK Banerjee of Essel Propack who spoke about the new generation lamitube for packaging. Nitin Sankhe of Huhtamaki- PPL spoke about the latest developments of flexible laminates in packaging. This session was concluded by John James of UK-based Wells Plastics who addressed the delegates on the topic of flexible packaging waste management.
In the fourth session the topic un- der discussion was the new generation of rigid plastics in packaging. Rajat Ke- dia of Manjushree talked about innova- tion of PET bottles for beverages, Tushae Sharwalker spoke about new de- velopments of vent caps for chemical packaging and finally the session was closed by VK Singh of Newgen Special- ity Plastics who talked about innovations in rigid rotomolded containers.
The fifth and the final session dis- cussed testing and evaluation where San- jay Chattopadhyay, professor and head (Lab Division), IIP spokeon‘Package Val- idation — An important Tool for Quali- ty Evaluation’ while NB Lalwani, deputy director, IIP talked about a transport wor- thiness test for plastic containers.
