Executive Perspectives: Business Strategies Shaping Pouch & Flexible Packaging Operations, Technologies, Markets, & End-use Applications
Executives at pouch and flexible packaging converters at all tier levels are recasting the strategies of the companies and business units they lead. Collaboration, consolidation, cost pressures, the search for the next disruptive technology, and the lure of BRIC opportunities weigh heavily in planning for future growth and profitability.

The Global Pouch Forum will engage a panel of forward thinking executives who will share their varied visions for how they plan to create unique value propositions that will mitigate operational risk while creating profit-building opportunities for themselves and their brand-owner customers.

Networking Lunch & Gateway Pouch Technology Award Presentation
Sargento Honored With Gateway Pouch Technology Award
Recognizing the consumer convenience attributes and the potential to differentiate its pouched shredded cheese product at the point of sale, Sargento’s pioneering application of Pactiv’s Slide-Rite Advanced Closure System surprised its well-entrenched competitors. Consumer response resulted in huge market share gains for what at the time was a small, family-owned producer of natural shredded, sliced, and snack cheeses, as well as a appetizers, cheese ingredients and sauces.

Sargento’s Senior Packaging Engineering Manager Judy Fischer will be on hand to accept the award.

Tapping "Transitional" Consumers To Create New Pouch Business Opportunities
Pouches and flexible packaging offer certain inherent attributes of sustainability. But are those qualities being accurately communicated to consumers – or conveyed at all – when it comes to the realities of the eco-friendliness of pouches and flexible packaging? Learn from a branding and packaging communications specialists how to tap the rapidly emerging demographic of eco-conscious “transitional” consumers – a segment that wields powerful purchasing clout, but still likely lacks the information to make educated decisions about the eco-aspects of pouches.

PLUS: This presentation will include survey results and videos of real consumers explaining why they choose one package format over another – including pouches and flexible packaging.

New Pouch Technologies & End-Market Opportunities
Food and beverage producers are frantic seeking “game-changing” structures that will drive shelf velocity.  The rub is that the level of innovation required is often economically disruptive to their manufacturing and distribution infrastructures.  This means they don’t buy in operationally and, accordingly, they can’t cash in at point of sale.

This presentation will deliver a rapid-fire salvo of potential pouch technology “global game changers” that could equalize the economic/POP equation.  You will hear new developments on:

• FFS Sleeve-In-Pouch
• Multiple configurations of “Edge Stand”
• Liquid stick pouches for the exploding healthcare segment
• Corner Zip pouches and NEW E-Peel opening features
• Flexible “Gourmet Cup” pouches
• And NEW stand-up configurations not previously seen in the U.S.

Neil Kozarsky, CEO, T.H.E.M.

High-growth, High-Value Targets for Liquid Pouches
Rigid plastic bottle converters have all but conceded the liquid foodservice market to pouches and are beginning to see conversion in club store channels as well.  Forum attendees will hear data and insight by the author of a new report on why food safety issues, infinitely variable pouch sizes, lightweighting, barrier, ease of dispensability, and even sustainability-driven transportation/distribution advantages will be the multi-tiered launching pad from which materials, structures, and filling equipment for liquid pouches will reach new market segment dominance.  An ensuing discussion will highlight growth projections for large-format pouches in institutional applications and high-value-add “healthy” retail product segments.

Daniel Beard, President, Packaging Specialists, Inc.

GLOBAL POUCH FORUM EXCLUSIVE!
The Emergence Of The Recyclable Pouch: A Peak Into A Sustainable Future
As sustainability gathers momentum with consumers, a major quest for pouch brand owners and converters has been the search for a recyclable, mono-material pouch that provides similar performance characteristics as existing offers.

Method Home, already a pioneering household products leader, will offer its views on the work underway behind the scenes at end-user companies and will give a peak into its development of next-generation pouch technology that also meets sustainability goals.

Rudi Becker, Manager, Home Care, Method Home