Catalan companies from the entire container and packaging value chain discussed four strategic areas at the IV Strategic Immersion of the Packaging Cluster: design, branding and strategy; technology; sustainability; and management and innovation.
Artur Costa, called on all partners to use the Packaging Cluster to catalyze impact projects and new business opportunities. Attendees participated in 12 sessions, with national and international speakers, who helped strategic reflection of the sector, promoting areas such as innovation, collaboration, digitization and the circular economy.
Smithers Pira senior consultant Dominic Cakebread showed the trends and elements that will set the packaging trends. Likewise, it predicted an average annual growth in the sector of 3,3%, driven by the growth of rigid and flexible plastic packaging.
Then, Enric Barba, Cirsa's business advisor, spoke about innovation management and its relationship with the strategic one, emphasizing taking risks and planning well all execution.
After the coffee break, it was Siemens' turn, where technologists Thomas Menzel and Javier Fernández showed how digitization is changing the industry, reducing time-to-market, increasing productivity, reliability and quality of the industrial process.
Marc Valls, promoter of relations with the company of the Elisava school, showed how the center works, exemplifying with concrete cases of work between companies and students and teachers, where he highlighted the case of launches of new innovative packaging with the company Estal Packaging.
Sandra Parcet, a partner of Clase BCN, closed the morning session of the first day, highlighting the importance of having a branding strategy that affects all levels of the company, as well as a completely collaborative work between the company and the designer , to run successful campaigns.
The afternoon began with a presentation by Carlos Cuffi, representative of the Mobile World Capital Barcelona, who spoke about digital transformation, suggesting elements such as the incorporation of millennials and new technologies into companies, having a presence on social networks and working in open environments.
Finally, Ferran Agúndez and Xavier Ferràs, Ignite's innovation consultants, did a session on the relationship between judo and management.
Sustainability, a key concept
On the second day, the Ecoembes business manager, Jorge Serrano, explained his waste management model and contrasted it with the deposit, return and return system that Germany uses, explaining the advantages of the current system in management efficiency, as well as of the challenge of getting to recycle 80% of the packaging.
Continuing with sustainability, it was the turn of Lucasz Holec, project manager of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, who announced the transition from linear to circular model, already showing different success stories and examples that are being implemented from the industry.
As an example, Antonio Raimundo, head of marketing at Chep, a member company of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, presented the company's business model and emphasized the need to incorporate sustainability into the business model.
Xavier Pascual, director of the Hispack Hall, pointed out the importance of concepts such as e-commerce, social sensitivity to packaging, technological challenges and professionalization with packaging manager profiles within companies.
Finally, the immersion closed the Olympic medalist Maribel Martinez, gold in Barcelona 92 and current member of Talent Trainers, who, with an emotional presentation, explained the management of teams to achieve results and objectives, highlighting the effort, organization and involvement at all levels to achieve successful results.
