15-18 June 2027
Crocus Expo, Moscow
Rising transport costs, tighter waste reporting requirements, and constant pressure to reduce pack weight are forcing teams to rethink what “good” means for flexible packaging materials. Data reports annual plastic production climbed from 2 million tonnes in 1950 to around 460 million tonnes by 2019, sharpening the focus on material efficiency alongside reliability. One response gaining traction is the use of raw, expandable materials. These formats are shipped compact and then activated near pack-out to provide protection with less volume and material. Options range from inflatable cushioning and foam-in-place to line-converted paper systems, where activation must match line speed and quality control.
Expandable formats can shift costs to areas that finance teams actually track. By moving less air, sites can improve pallet density and reduce pressure on the warehouse footprint. Packaging teams also gain a bit more freedom to right-size protection, particularly when product mixes change and stock-keeping units (SKUs) proliferate.
There is a useful parallel here with right-sizing principles in e-commerce packaging. EcoEnclose notes that reducing pack dimensions can lower both material purchases and shipping costs when carriers price by dimensional weight. While that example is not limited to expandables, it reflects the same underlying dynamic: volume has a price.
Expandable materials can help, but only when the line is engineered around them. Most production teams have seen “good ideas” create bottlenecks because activation takes longer than the upstream process, or because variation builds up and triggers rejects.
A few technical points tend to separate scalable deployments from stalled pilots:
When teams treat these as commissioning requirements rather than afterthoughts, expandables become a controllable process step.
Sustainability claims are easier to make than they are to defend. That is why more technical teams are grounding material selection in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), especially when changes affect both environmental impact and operating spend.
A 2024 study in the Journal of Cleaner Production proposes a structured approach that combines customer requirements with engineering selection tools, then evaluates options using LCA and LCC. That is a helpful direction for packaging departments because it prevents “lowest unit cost” thinking from dominating decisions with long-term implications for waste, damage, and transport.
Even strong material choices can underperform if end-of-life handling is vague. Plants are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate what happens after use, particularly for high-volume flexible formats where collection and sorting remain difficult.
That is why conversations about recyclability are shifting towards systems. Collection, sorting, and washing lines influence outcomes as much as material selection, drawing attention to recycling machinery and the realities of contamination, multilayer separation, and yield losses. The more transparent a packaging team is about end-of-life pathways, the easier it is to defend its choices to regulators, retailers, and internal sustainability leads.
Materials science is advancing in parallel with process engineering. Research overviews continue to highlight advances in biodegradable materials, barrier performance, and intelligent functions that protect product integrity while reducing environmental impact. In practical terms, more teams are evaluating smart packaging materials that support traceability, freshness management, or condition monitoring, provided the added complexity is justified and compatible with existing converting and filling constraints.
If sustainable packaging innovation is on the 2026 agenda, the fastest progress tends to come from seeing materials alongside the processes that shape performance: activation systems, converting, inspection, and end-of-line handling. For suppliers bringing new formats to market, an exhibit enquiry is often the most efficient way to start conversations with technical decision-makers who can evaluate feasibility, not only price.
