Specialist
Former VP at Ball Corp
Agenda
- Recent trends in the F&B (food and beverage) sector and 2021 outlook
- Competitive landscape overview, including emerging opportunities
- Shift to canning from glass and outlook for beer and alcohol
- Increased focus on wellness and sustainability in consumer preferences
Questions
1.
What are the most relevant trends in food packaging? What should we be monitoring?
2.
How has consumers’ attention to freshness and health and wellness impacted packaging? It’s an overarching theme that has increasingly gained momentum over recent years. Does the trend favour one form of packaging over another?
3.
Has the growing popularity of plant-based diets had any impact on packaging? Could that have an overall impact in how things will be packaged?
4.
What are your expectations for the on-the-go category? You mentioned how the category took some hits in overall volume due to the pandemic. Do you expect an aggressive bounce-back? Are certain brands likely to benefit more from the on-the-go category making a comeback?
5.
Are the packaging themes and trends in North America different from South America vs Asia vs Europe? Would you highlight any industry knowledge in differentiating geographical market trends?
6.
What’s your take on sustainability initiatives in food and beverage packaging? It’s probably still in the early stages of customers and food manufacturers taking a hard look at their efforts and packaging, but plastic PET would appear to be the big loser while the broader trends, such as flexible packaging, seem to be a major tailwind. Are customers increasingly valuing sustainability and recyclability? Could it drive innovation?
7.
Would you say plastic and PET have a very solid growth outlook in food packaging, due to the tendency to use flexible packaging, whereas canning has had tailwinds due to the pandemic, and glass probably has recyclability headwinds? Would that summarise your growth prospects for each of these mediums?
8.
How did 2020 impact beverage packaging? What broader market trends were developing?
9.
Do you have concerns about beverage and aluminium can volumes becoming oversupplied? It still seems to be severely undersupplied – notably in North America – despite fairly substantial capacity additions in the past year or two, and a lot more planned. What’s the risk of adding too much capacity and the market being oversupplied several years from now? Is demand so substantial that overcapacity isn’t on the radar yet?
10.
What are the risks around exponential growth? Do you think the upstream suppliers, the machine manufacturers and so on, can handle the capacity additions occurring now and still to come? Do you have concerns around upstream suppliers, whether rolled aluminium, or the actual machine manufacturers’ ability to produce machines at the required rate? Do you anticipate supply chain issues upstream?
11.
What are the potential canning volume risks? Continued growth seems likely but there are indications that technology innovations could make PET more attractive. What efforts are being made to improve the green credentials on the PET side? What innovations in PET could disrupt canning volume?
12.
Is it possible for companies to convert food canning lines to beverage canning lines? Is it feasible and is it costly? Aluminium cans for beverage seems to be most significantly imbalanced in supply vs potential demand. What alternatives are there to meeting canning demand volume on the beverage side?
13.
Ball Corp has taken on some longer-term contracts than in the past, on average. Could this spread industry-wide? Is there appetite among suppliers and customers to take on slightly longer-term contracts? What are the respective puts and takes?
14.
Could you outline Ball’s competitive positioning in beverage cans, and strengths or weaknesses?
15.
What’s your competitive commentary for Amcor and BWay? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
16.
Is there still significant runway for consolidation in the beverage canning sector? Would you expect some of the larger players to be fairly active in M&A? Is the landscape fairly consolidated already – is there not as much opportunity as before?
17.
Is there anything you’d like to add or reiterate about food and beverage packaging? What angles might warrant a deeper dive?
18.
What’s your outlook on industry regulations given the new Biden administration in the US? Is there anything in the pipeline? Would government intervention be likely to occur first at the state level, then at the federal level? What shifts in regulatory policy might first impact the packaging market?
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