From 12 to 14 March 2026, an exceptional global packaging conference organized by the Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) took place in New Delhi. The conference streams and session topics were comprehensive in their coverage of all types of packaging, its various technologies, and its current and futuristic concerns, such as sustainability, smart packaging, and artificial intelligence.
One of the highlights of the conference was that it brought together a wide spectrum of the packaging industry and community, from consumables, technology, machinery suppliers, to packaging innovators, converters, experts, academics from Indian and global institutions, as well as packaging students from all over the world. I had the opportunity to briefly meet with packaging students from five African countries. The DS Group made a special contribution to the event with a substantial cash prize for encouraging and attracting the most talented students to the packaging industry.
The session topics under the 5S-Ai theme were Safe, Secure, Standardized, Smart, Sustainable, and Artificial Intelligence. Apart from the conference sessions, there were Technical sessions, a Research Conclave, and the IIP Packathon for contesting packaging innovations and innovators. Some of the sessions that I attended were extremely valuable. Deepak Ganjoo of Parksons Packaging presented his company’s developments in paper and fiber-based food and beverage packaging, reflecting the paperization trend for various types of packaging, since there are established waste collection and recycling streams for these materials.
The presentation on anti-corrosion packaging films by Rachel Jacob of Suprabha Protective Products based in Pune, was especially impressive, since we were unaware that these technologies are available and being manufactured in India for the packaging and logistics of various metallic engineering goods and products. The session on migration of packaging inks, risks, regulations, and risk migration strategies was critical for food packaging brand owners, packaging ink suppliers, and converters supplying food packaging materials to consumer product companies. Jatin Takkar of Siegwerk addressed this topic from the ink manufacturers’ side and put forward low migration ink requirements solutions. He also spoke about sustainability innovations that are now available, including deinking and delamination for separating packaging films for their appropriate waste streams.
There were important research presentations on recycling plastic packaging waste. These included ‘Surviving the Green Wave – Korean Strategies on Packaging Design for Recycling and Standardization’ by Dr Jong Kyoung Kim from Korea, and the extremely important presentation on ‘Sustainable Upcycling of Post-consumer Mixed Plastics’ by Dr Tanyaradzwa S Muzata, who is now based at the Michigan State University School of Packaging. Although fairly technical, these presentations put forward the need for the standardization of plastic substrates in order to meaningfully recycle without loss of value or downcycling post-consumer packaging.
The well-attended conference had more than 30 stands in the tea and networking areas. The 15 Platinum and Gold partners for the event included raw material and technology suppliers as well as packaging converters such as Indian Oil, Parkson, UFlex, GLS, Jupiter, Suprabha, W&H, and the DS Group. The conference was also supported by the World Packaging Organization and the Asian Packaging Federation.
