Europe Dairy Packaging Market Size

Europe Dairy Packaging Market Analysis

The Europe Dairy Packaging Market is expected to reach a CAGR of 5.2% during the forecast period (2020 - 2025). Factors such as growing preference for Protein based products, increasing adoption of innovative packaging are responsible for the growth in the dairy packaging market in Europe.

• In April 2020, carton giant SIG was selected to supply one of the largest European greenfield UHT milk projects, spearheaded by Hochwald, one of the largest German dairy cooperatives. As part of the mega project, Hochwald will build a new plant with a capacity of more than 800 million litres of milk per annum. Milk will be processed and sold as UHT milk, cream, condensed milk and flavoured milk for the European market and export to China, Middle East and Africa from 2022. Such developments leading to the increase in the production of milk is expected to provide a boost to the dairy packaging market in the region.
• Moving forward to recyclability, the structure proposed for the European region is highly complex. Multiple stakeholders, especially converters and recyclers have been witnessed to expand operations, collaborate and launch technologies aiding the Circular Economy Initiative.
• For instance, ALPLA, a major Austrian converter, and recycler of plastics have a core product, a bottle made from PET which is recycled plastic to be used again and again. The firm collaborated with other businesses, including Nöm, an Austrian dairy company to supply ALPLA 100% recycled PET bottles for its milk products. ALPLA, additionally, is a signatory to the Circular Plastics Alliance, an initiative supported by the European Commission to boost plastic recycling inside the EU to 10 million tons by 2025.
• However, the regulations regarding the use of plastic for packaging aided the growth of the glass packaging format for milk. Countries, like Russia and the United Kingdom, embraced this format of packaging for fresh milk.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant reduction in demand for dairy products from the EU and non-EU countries. This represents a serious threat to the EU dairy sector. The situation on this market, which remained stable over the last year, has shifted: a drastic fall in prices, difficulties in exporting products, a steep increase in packaging prices, and an increase in freight prices make exports to third countries uneconomic The reduction in consumption caused, among other things, by the total loss of the HoReCa market, is posing a real threat to farmers and processors. According to European Parliment it is estimated that the European dairy sector is currently losing EUR 120 million.
• In April 2020, the European Dairy Association (EDA) has called on the European Commission for support in protecting the sector against the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak. The association called for "immediate action" to help the milk processing industry deal with the ongoing crisis.