Sean Riley: Hi, I'm Sean Riley here with Liz Cuneo from Healthcare Packaging magazine and Matt Reynolds from Packaging World magazine and we're at PACK EXPO East 2026. We're coming to you live with some of the latest trends that Matt and Liz have seen on the show floor. We're going to talk about some of that, maybe some things that they've seen at other shows that have kind of come to fruition, and some innovations that we might be looking to for the future. So I guess we'll start things off, ladies first. Liz, what did you see out there on the floor that was innovative and trend-worthy?
Liz Cuneo: Yes, thank you, Sean. So in the healthcare space, a lot of talk right now about GLP-1s. That whole segment is rising rapidly. And not just GLP-1s, though, so biologics in general, specialty drugs, cancer treatments, that type of stuff. So what these three things have in common is the requirement for cold-chain shipping.
Sean Riley: Okay.
Liz Cuneo: So a lot of cold-chain shippers and solutions here at the show, and a lot of them really focus on the sustainability side of the industry. So solutions like compostable liners in the boxes made with PCR-content recyclable shippers. Anything that really gets away from the traditional foam being used in these shippers was really taking center stage.
Sean Riley: Because cold chain, it has to be shipped at a crazy cold temperature, right? I know that's not the technical term for it, "crazy cold", but isn't that literally what cold chain is? Because I remember this was a thing getting the vaccines back in the day.
Liz Cuneo: Yes, exactly. There's a very specific range that they have to be within during the whole time. So from shipment all the way to the front door of a pharmacy, what have you, a physician, so it's definitely an important thing. But it's interesting that the industry is also trying to really work in that sustainability in addition to keeping the drugs, of course, at the optimal temperature.
Sean Riley: Right. And I know that medical and healthcare often have to wrestle with the sustainable ideas or options that are available to them because they have to keep the stuff safe. But at the same time, a lot of it's single-use.
Liz Cuneo: Yes. Highly regulated industry, of course, so that's that other kind of challenge when we talk about sustainable materials. Luckily in cold chain, these aren't really coming in contact with the drug itself, so I think you get a little more leniency there. But yeah, a lot of regulations surrounding what's safe or what's appropriate for that class.
Sean Riley: Interesting. And because sustainability, we can, it's here now. For years we've been talking about it, but now it's everywhere. So I'm assuming, Matt, that you couldn't have gone very far on the show floor without stumbling upon some sustainable-type materials, innovations, trends. I mean, it has to be everywhere.
Matt Reynolds: It is. It used to be a category or a topic. It's not a topic anymore. It's part of packaging, part of goals. I think some of the legislation we've talked about EPR, extended producer responsibility. We're in sessions today describing the states that it's rolling out in. California is doing it one way and other states are doing it different ways. California being the world's sixth-largest economy, we kind of wags the dog.
So regardless, brand owners in general who are attendees today are going booth to booth looking for, "How am I going to be compliant?" Because it's coming up soon. They're already reporting data into Oregon. They're going to be doing that soon for Colorado and California in early 2027. Colorado's coming up this year. So that's kind of in the back of everybody's mind. Gone are the days of what used to be, let's say, just doing things for consumer for the illusion, of altruism.
Sean Riley: Yes.
Matt Reynolds: Now you're getting basically the backing of actual legislation and it seems to be the train has left the station, it seems to be gathering momentum.
Sean Riley: Yeah, it's not, "Is it sustainable?" Anymore, it's, "How is it sustainable?" Because it better be, it's not, "Is it?" It has to be.
Matt Reynolds: And it's being quantified in a way that it never has before, because what's sustainable? Is it compostable? Is that sustainable? Is it recyclable? Defining sustainability has always been a very difficult thing, but with EPR, it's actually putting numbers and metrics to what we call sustainable. Now the problem is does Colorado match what California says and what Maine says? Is that going to be different than what Maryland says?
Sean Riley: Right.
Matt Reynolds: Eventually, in a perfect world, future state, we hope for some sort of alignment between our federal push that way. But regardless, the effect on our attendees at PACK EXPO, brand owners, mostly, also contract packagers, is going to be there looking to optimize their packaging for sustainability. And there's a lot of different subsections, as we said, within that. At the show, I think one of the biggest trends that we saw, and Bree and I were out walking around and we were looking at paperization.
Sean Riley: Okay.
Matt Reynolds: That's appearing everywhere. Mars KIND had the big-splash paper film. So we're seeing a lot more paper, paper that uses some layer of some sort of barrier, because paper is trying to do what we've developed multi-layer plastics to do. One layer is the tie layer. One layer is puncture resistance. One layer is barrier, water vapor barrier. Another barrier is oxygen ingress. All these things we created, we optimized packaging to have all these great properties. Now to make it recyclable, we have to remove all these layers.
Sean Riley: And you have to figure out how to do it on paper.
Matt Reynolds: On paper, but you have to have a small enough amount of, whether it's a mineral or a coating or something like that. We were at Dow a couple of days ago right before the show started, and there their paper coatings division, seeing a lot of really interesting stuff there that will imbue packaging with real properties, water vapor transmission prevention and oxygen transmission prevention. If you move that out to the food service side, you're going to see some grease prevention. They have to worry about PFAS and so on. But paperization as a trend is just a massive one. We saw it all over the show floor here.
Sean Riley: And when you say paperization, we're able to add all these properties and it's still recyclable? How is it different with plastic? I know that seems like a simple question.
Matt Reynolds: It's threading a needle. I think Western Michigan University has certain repulpability standards. So what percentage, by weight, of a pouch or something like that is the material that it's going to be is actual fibers? The length of the fiber varies, but the fibers themselves that are reusable and how much can be extracted, whether it's a small thin layer? I think it's less than 2%. I forget what the number is, but there's a certain threshold. If the layers, the coatings that provide barrier are smaller than a certain ratio, then that constitutes repulpability — repulpability equals recyclability, being able to sell that material back into packaging to become packaging again.
Sean Riley: Okay. Now, from a paper standpoint, we're kind of touching on that, but were there any other, whether it's monomaterials, bio-based materials, any other type of materials that you came across on the floor?
Matt Reynolds: Yeah. Everybody's shifting materials and it's whack-a-mole, because somebody's moving from paper to monomaterial. It depends on the life cycle assessment. Every product is unique.
Sean Riley: Right.
Matt Reynolds: But yeah, we're seeing, I mentioned the flexible packaging, the move towards monomaterials. So that would be single-material structures, or not necessarily single-layer. They could have multiple layers, but of the same material. Those need barrier also. So there are polyvinyl alcohol, EVOH is something that they can use in very small amounts, small enough amounts that monolayer PE, polyethylene, can make its way through a stream and that's not going to impact recyclability. So monomaterials are huge. And honestly, we always talk about materials, but how that impacts the machinery out here.
Sean Riley: Yeah. That's what I was just thinking. Yeah.
Matt Reynolds: Exactly. So one of the common things for whether it's horizontal or vertical flow wrapping or horizontal form-fill-seal is going to be the seal jaws and the dwell time and the temperatures. And we had polymaterial that was great for withstanding high temperatures. It had this huge window. You could make huge mistakes and you'd still get that reliable seal because we designed the material to be really forgiving. But now with the monomaterials, that's less forgiving. With paper, using paper as a film, that's much less forgiving. So you're seeing the machinery have to adjust. So brand owners are looking to their OEM partners to either create new machinery that can hit much more exacting specs for those seals when those seal jaws close, or better yet, retrofit existing machinery.
Sean Riley: Exactly.
Matt Reynolds: And a lot of times it could mean a whole new machine, it could be a retrofit just changing the seal jaws. I saw a couple examples out there. Greener had a brand new seal jaw that is able to hit these really exacting standards for both paper and poly. I believe they might have had something to do with the KIND Mars rollout earlier this year. So it's a lot of words to say sustainability is everywhere, and it's not just the material, it's the machinery.
Sean Riley: Now, another topic that's popping up that I know you've touched on a bit that I think you can both kind of speak to is Sunrise 2027 is coming up. Is that something you guys have seen on the show floor? Is that having an impact on other aspects of packaging? Maybe you can speak to that a little bit.
Matt Reynolds: Yeah. So a little background, Sunrise 2027 is the move from the traditional GTIN, that's the one-dimensional barcode, 1D barcode, that makes your product go "beep" at the checkout. Retail as an industry, whether it's Wegmans or Kroger or even Amazon — we'll talk about that in a minute — have decided that they want to pack more information and more utility than is available in a, whether it's a 12- or 13-digit GTIN, which is the global identifier basic number.
Sean Riley: Okay.
Matt Reynolds: And they do so by going from a one-dimensional to a two-dimensional code. So we call these 2D codes. We can call them QR codes as one example. GS1 is actually standardizing on a 2D code that is going to be able to pack in all sorts of information from the GTIN, including AIs — and it's not artificial intelligence, that's everywhere else, also. But these are application identifiers.
Sean Riley: Oh, okay.
Matt Reynolds: So an AI is an application identifier that will say whether the QR code is going to, if they scan it, take a consumer to a company page to learn more about the provenance of this wine. "This wine is especially dry because it was a really wet season," or something like that. Also, there are a lot of supply chain implications upstream so the brand owners themselves can connect with the end user. It will still contain the GTIN to make your product go "beep" at the checkout, but it also supports all sorts of inventory management for the retailer. Brand advantages include supply chain visibility. So there's just a lot of advantages to the amount of information that you can fit within these 2D codes.
Now, there's a vertical limit, there's a maximum because you can only fit so much information without getting the resolution really high — so high that a scanner can't read it — or making the code itself so big that it's bigger than the package itself. So there are some parameters as you trade off on the size versus what's going to appear in the QR code. But a lot going on with Sunrise 2027. It's called 2027 because, by 2027, all retailers are going to be capable of scanning the 2D barcode next to the GTIN, the traditional GTIN, such that you don't even need the traditional GTIN anymore.
Sean Riley: Right. Now, it's not that big of a leap to go from that to connected packaging, which I know, Liz, you had some things that you saw on the floor, some innovations and trends that you wanted to talk about.
Liz Cuneo: Yeah. So definitely on the show floor, but also on the Industry Speaks stage, hearing some interesting trends that are shaping pharmaceutical packaging. So of course QR codes and connected packaging is a huge trend going on. As we know, packaging is increasingly becoming a tool for digital engagement, as well as operational efficiency. So it's kind of a dual tool here, if you will. Some rhyming.
Sean Riley: I love that.
Liz Cuneo: So companies are using these features like temperature-control packaging — going back to the cold chain — QR codes, RFID tags, NFC-enabled smart packaging. And it's really interesting because sometimes it's following the package through the supply chain. So we're really being able to see that there's no counterfeiting going on, no tampering. But then on the end-user side — users like us — we can scan and see the proper dosage or even reminders to take your medicine. So there's a lot of opportunity in that space and it's pretty exciting.
Sean Riley: Yeah. And I've seen on produce where you can see who the person was that picked it and stuff like that and the journey of it through that. That's very interesting. We don't have much time left, but I would be remiss if I didn't touch on AI. AI is everywhere. It's 2026. It's the sustainability of 10 years ago, where sustainability was a buzzword. Well, AI is a buzzword, but it's here now. Matt, did you see things out there that were AI-worthy? Anything that stood out to you that we need to touch on?
Matt Reynolds: Yeah, a lot of the MES systems and warehouse management systems are now using an AI layer to take all this data and make sense of it and make it easily interrogatable. There were two examples we saw on the floor. One was Maven AI, which actually debuted last year at Southeast, and then also Harmony AI. So these are two layers of AI that can basically interrogate existing company data.
So you could have a company — in the case of Harmony AI, it was a bottler that served the Maker’s Marks and the Jack Daniel’s of the world down in Tennessee and Kentucky, that area. So they were bottling for these companies, and these companies would have massive fluctuations in the amount of bottles that they needed, and the bottler had to be extremely reactive to that.
But instead of being reactive, they've added this AI layer that's compounded 40 years’ worth of data and information — some of it from Excel files, some of it basically paper-written — into something central to all of the company's information. I believe it’s Claude as the platform that’s used. There's a gated corner of Claude where all that company's information then acts as, within a large language model, almost that company-specific small language model that can be interrogated. So you can ask, which line should I move production to, assuming that we're going to have to do 100,000 more bottles in January when we thought we only had to do 10,000, or something like that? So the AI layer allows human interaction and human input to not only crunch the numbers, but then recommend what the action should be.
Sean Riley: And I love that also from a workforce standpoint. We talk about the workforce issues all the time. We're losing a lot of people retiring and not getting new workers in. And from a tribal knowledge standpoint, that sounds like something that would be super helpful there. It can kind of collect — maybe it was Rick on line two that knew how to navigate those bottle switches and knew it off the top of his head or had it jotted down somewhere. That information's leaving, going out the door, so AI is able to kind of step in and help that out. So that's great to hear from that standpoint.
Well, we could talk all day about the show. I'm sure both of you could. We have another show coming up in October, PACK EXPO International, so we'll revisit this. And I'm sure we'll see a lot of these trends then and we’ll talk again about that. So I want to thank you again, Liz, for coming on here, and Matt, for taking time out of the show.
Liz Cuneo: Thank you for having me.
Sean Riley: Thank you, Liz. And Matt.
Matt Reynolds: Yeah, it was great. Thanks, Sean.
Sean Riley: All right, the pleasure was all mine and thanks for listening to the podcast.
