The Next Generation

The PTIS Future of Packaging team is building plans now for our next Future of Packaging Program, coming in 2025.

We stand at a moment of fast-emerging transformations, including new societal thinking & more global and domestic pressures, new material development, material recovery, transformational issues like climate change & microplastics, the digitization of packaging, and new business practices. Packaging can meet the challenge of these sweeping changes if its leaders harness the power of foresight and strategy development, understand emerging change, explore future challenges and opportunities, and concretize plans to arrive at a successful future. That future will look different, and succeeding in it requires Horizon 3 – transformational thinking to develop packaging for the Next Generation.

Now is the time to start thinking about what you want your packaging organization to be in 2035!

What is the Future of Packaging™ Program?

The PTIS Future of Packaging program (FoP) is a multi-sponsor program that explores the long-term future of packaging across the value chain with implications for action today and the years ahead. While no one “predicts” the future, foresight helps anticipate risks, challenges and opportunities, and be prepared for them before they arise.

PTIS has produced and facilitated this collaborative program since 2004, serving dozens of leading organizations across the value chain as sponsors, with many as repeat participants.

We are now offering our next program, to commence in early 2025. As you build into new opportunities for the 2030s in a changed world, the work in understanding the Future of Packaging is only more critical for packaging organizations.

Here is a brief FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions.

A meeting of the minds

You’ll join with colleagues from other leading packaging sector organizations and explore how the marketplace is transforming. The FOP team will share forecasts and scenarios for the future impacting your interests, with a spirit of opportunity amidst challenge.

What’s the same this time, what’s different?

FOP will be like its eight predecessor programs, in that it brings together thought leaders and leading packaging executives to explore the future for and of the sector.

But it will also be different with new futurists partners providing a different perspective. We have passed through an unprecedented wave of change with COVID-19 and supply chain turmoil to the future with AI impacts, sustainability goals, and the digitization of packaging- the focus now is on the next generation for packaging. Wildcards may be the norm and will be even more impactful, and the key is considering how we deal with them. One key is preparedness and leadership.

Our promise is to equip you with the insights and ways of thinking so you can do that not just successfully, but so that your organization can thrive.

With so much uncertainty, what can you do now?

  • Start your journey to your future success by envisioning your preferred future
  • Build plans to withstand alternative possible futures.
  • Build plans that are robust and successful against multiple post-pandemic outcomes and be ready for the next generation of packaging.Many of the past sponsors have and continue to use the proprietary Future of Packaging Program as a means to help their company leverage the roadmaps to shape the future of packaging within their organization.

FOP - The Next Generation

The power and potential of:

  • Building a truly circular economy – including how production and end of life for packaging will need to change
    Global forces of change shaping packaging and the marketplace to 2035
  • AI and machine learning – the impact on packaging operations and the workforce
  • Virtuality across work, play, commerce
  • Digital and smart everything
  • Retail and e-commerce prospects
  • Industry 4.0 – rescaling production, localization, demand economy, bio-based production
  • Society, culture, values, attitudes, and the generations
  • A new economics of family life
  • The global economic and political landscape
  • Packaging integrating with the supply chain – moving to Design-to-Value
  • In depth global/regional consumer understanding and insights
  • Next Gen collaborations and what they provide

In summary, what is next for the world of packaging and how to get there.

WHAT YOU WILL GET—The clearest available view of the future of packaging

  • Comprehensive analysis and forecasts for critical areas of change and opportunity for the packaging value chain
  • Preparedness for the future with vision & clarity – and what is needed for implementation
  • Insights on emerging change in and for packaging across the value chain and marketplace
  • A look beyond current trends at the potential for Horizon 3, transformation change that could dramatically impact how packaging is produced, sold & integrated into the circular economy
  • Scenarios for the world packaging will serve in 2035
  • Roadmaps cross the value chain to guide you through to Horizon 3 – the Next Generation of Packaging

Join the PTIS Future of Packaging™ to:

  • Understand how the forces shaping packaging today and tomorrow will influence your business
  • Get early warning of longer-term changes that you must strategize for
  • Utilize FoP Value Chain roadmaps and strategies for future success
  • Face the future, knowledgeable and prepared

About the Program:

  • Consists of 3 meeting (2 days each) held in late January, May, September 2025
  • Meetings held in unique venues to inspire the use of foresight and future-thinking
  • Size is limited to 25 companies (2-3 attendees per company)
  • Open to raw material suppliers, packaging converters, brand owners, equipment providers & retailers

Become a Sponsor!

Contact a leading PTIS principal for more information or to join!