Taking place on 1 and 2 March, the show’s visitor figures like last year topped the 6,000 mark, offering two halls packed with stands and a full seminar programme throughout. The show includes the Empack and Label & Print shows, which are also arranged by Packaging Innovations’ organiser Easyfairs.  

With a focus on inclusivity and sustainability in packaging, exhibitors included HP, Epson, Durst and Macfarlane Packaging. 

HP was mainly discussing the merits of its Mosaic personalisation software, with personalisation being a major theme at the show.

“This is a great market and you realise how it affects our everyday lives. You are influenced with packaging in terms of what you buy and how easily you use things and that’s changing all the time,” said Packaging Innovations event director Gerry Sherwood. 

“A main trend this year is inclusivity, we’ve set up a new feature this year, a really critical issue for an ageing population where packaging needs to serve lots of purposes for a very broad range of people with different levels of ability or disability."

Sherwood said the newly launched Ecopack Challenge was a feature that could be grown in the next few years. "It was tightly contested, and the winners of that are helping to develop stuff that’s tackling big issues at the moment," he added.

Deli Store, the Challenge winners, developed a disposable paper cup that requires no separation before recycling, and will now have the chance to develop the idea working in partnership with Marks & Spencer.

Researchers from Design Futures, a partnership between the University of Cambridge and Sheffield Hallam University to raise awareness for the need for inclusive packaging, were on hand to discuss the issue. Design Futures principal researcher Alaster Yoxall’s research found one in five people are forced into changing products due to difficulties experienced in using packaging.

Glossop Cartons has been exhibiting at Packaging Innovations since 2013, and its director Jacky Sidebottom has used past shows to launch new marketing campaigns.

“I think this year has been an excellent shop window,” she said.

“You can get here, you can get to see your customers, you can attract new clients. It gives you a chance to compete to meet larger groups and rub shoulder-to-shoulder with them, hopefully attracting people to your stand.”

The show was also successful for label printers exhibiting in the Label & Print section, with Leicester-based Lapel Apeel managing director Stuart Kellock stating that the quality of the stands had gone up this year.

“This is probably one of those places where we can get our message properly across to a wider audience,” said Kellock.

“Sometimes if you’re going through the usual sales process of ringing people up and telling them you work in labels you get the usual sales issues but actually you’re saying to people, ‘Look, we are a label printing business but we are not just that, we’re really about taking your brand and making it absolutely ‘in’.”

At the show Sherwood announced that after two years he is leaving his role, to be replaced by James Drake-Brockman, who has been in the events industry for 17 years but is making his first foray into packaging. Sherwood will be taking up a role with marketing referral software company GleanIn.

“James brings a wealth of event management experience to the show. The underlying business model of running events is broadly similar, so if you can do that well, and James has that experience, then that’s great."

Drake-Brockman started two weeks ago working alongside Sherwood until he officially stepped down on Friday 3 March. Drake-Brockman said he has spent the last couple of weeks speaking to as many in the industry as possible and trying to familiarise himself with recent packaging trends. 

“On the surface you think you can really get your teeth into this market and when you start digging into it a bit more there are some really interesting things going on," he said.

"There’s a bit of crossover for me because I’ve always dealt with marketing but as far as print and packaging is concerned I’m very new and very rapidly trying to get my head around the market,” said Drake-Brockman.

Drake-Brockman will operate from Easyfairs’ London office, where he will be looking after the Packaging Portfolio of events, which comprises Packaging Innovations, Empack, Label & Print and Luxury Packaging. 

Packaging Innovations is a bi-annual event, with its other show taking place in London's Olympia in the autumn.