The market for meat packaging is expected to experience significant growth during the next five years, according to The Journey Ahead for the Meat Packaging Industry, a market study from Infiniti Research. Market drivers include increasing urbanization in developing countries, the need to maximize shelf life and technology advances to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of operations, storage and transportation.
Short-term and perhaps permanently, the global coronavirus pandemic has changed consumer behavior and attitudes. Research from Midan Marketing, a firm that tracks trends and provides other services to the meat industry, shows 70 percent of consumers are concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, this has extended food-safety considerations to packaging and spurred the adoption of case-ready products to reduce the amount of contact store personnel have with the product. This heightened emphasis on food safety could encourage the use of film with an antimicrobial coating. Applied during the print finishing process, one silver-based coating inhibits the growth of pathogens on the surface of the package with only a modest upcharge.