Ahead of this year's Sustainability in Packaging Asia 2025, we spoke with Annina Winkler,Investment Manager - Food & Agriculture at Emerald Technology Ventures to get a sneak peek of what we can expect from her presentation on 'The role of open innovation and venture capital to drive sustainability in packaging' Here's what she had to say…



Q1. Your upcoming presentation at Sustainability in Packaging Asia will explore “The role of open innovation and venture capital to drive sustainability in packaging”. Why is this message particularly critical for industry professionals to hear right now?

In these uncertain times, corporates need to be agile and ready with a technology toolbox that is prepped for tipping points and that can hedge for new (unexpected) market situations/opportunities driven by regulations, geo-political tensions and consumer preferences.

If you are a startup that's in a hurry to get traction, you need big friends to help you scale up new technologies and commercialize them at scale. Carefully selected corporate partners can be exactly the big friends that startups need. They offer financial and strategic help and access to the market, with resources that most startups simply don't have.

In exchange, startup entrepreneurs bring new ideas, agility and a sense of urgency – unfettered by corporate process. Corporates also benefit from novel technologies that have been developed by third parties, by commercially using or acquiring them whenever they have been validated and proven at scale. The concept of open innovation therefore allows both parties to benefit from each other’s capabilities and speeds up the evolution of critical technologies.


Q2. What do you see as the most significant hurdles companies encounter when shifting to sustainable packaging, and how can they overcome them?

Some of the most significant hurdles are

• material availability and supply chain limitations: lack of sustainable material’s availability at scale and required consistency, as well as lack of circularity-enabling infrastructure
• higher costs and economic barriers: squeezed margins or price premiums for end customers through higher packaging costs, as well as costly regulatory measures such as extended producer responsibility (EPR) fees
• performance constraints: lack of functional properties such as barrier functions, tear & water resistance, antimicrobial properties, visual transparency and others
• consumer perception and behavior: lack of acceptance for price premiums and changes in packaging design and product experience, as well as wrong packaging handling at its end-of-life
• regulatory and compliance hurdles: global patchwork of different regulations and lack of harmonization in standards with frequent changes to keep up with

Innovation, collaboration, and smart planning can help to bridge the gap between sustainability goals and practical implementation for overcoming the above-mentioned hurdles.


Q3. Are there any breakthrough technologies or innovations on the horizon that could transform sustainable packaging as we know it?

At Emerald, we see that the whole packaging value circle has potential for transformative technical innovation, including hard- and software solutions. Low-footprint raw materials (e.g., natural fibers), functionality-enhancing solutions for sustainable packaging materials (e.g. coatings and additives), smart or reusable packaging solutions (e.g., active packaging for prolonged shelf life), collection, sorting and cleaning solutions for reuse and recycling, or more efficient recycling technologies are only a few examples of such transformative innovations. 

At the moment, we are especially interested in high performance barrier coatings that are regulation- and recycling-friendly, novel labelling solutions, and formed fiber packaging. But our target list is quite long, and we are always interested in hearing from entrepreneurs with great ideas in this space.


Q4. Some argue that sustainable packaging comes at a higher cost than conventional alternatives. How would you respond to this concern, especially from a business viability perspective?

Virtually all new solutions in any material market at pilot cost more than legacy solutions at full scale. We invest in startups with packaging solutions that can compete on performance and cost as they scale. We believe that further optimization in technology and production processes, as well as the scale-up of production can help to reduce production costs. As mentioned before, collaboration of innovative startups with large players can play a critical role here for enabling easier and faster cost reductions. Regulatory pressure can further help by making these premium solutions commercially viable – by increasing costs of unsustainable packaging solutions or by pushing sustainable alternatives (e.g., by making them mandatory).


Q5. How can packaging be intentionally designed from the outset to align with circular economy principles?

Packaging should not only be made out of renewable, recyclable or compostable materials (e.g., fibers), but should also be designed for reuse (e.g., by containing RFID tags for easy logistics of large volumes of packaging) and easy and efficient recycling (e.g., by using water-based adhesives & inks, compostable labels). It should further be designed with minimized resource usage in mind (e.g., lightweighting solutions), should be compatible with existing recycling infrastructure (e.g., mono-materials), and should enable easy consumer education (e.g., on-pack recycling labels).
 
People often cite the “R's”:  Reduce, Refuse, Reuse, Recycle. Good packaging stewardship means making good material stack decisions for packaging that is compatible with collection, sorting and re-insertion into the value circle.


Q6. Looking ahead, what key trends or advancements do you anticipate shaping the future of sustainable packaging in the next 5-10 years?
 

• Paperization of packaging, delivering recyclability and compostability
• Circular-friendly barrier coatings that enable packaging performance without compromising circularity
• Track-and-traceability (connected/smart) packaging enabling reporting requirements for packaging material content. Digitalization of packaging for circularity and consumer engagement is well underway!
• Monomaterial packaging – design for end-of-life – approaches for legacy materials that are not currently well circularized so that they are not destined for incineration or landfill/litter
• Printing technologies that offer sustainable marking solutions