Through the Line: Packaging and Processing

A plant that can’t get more power from the grid still found room to electrify. Where did the headroom come from?

This podcast episode looks at how Royal Avebe, a farmer-owned starch and plant-protein cooperative in the Netherlands, electrified part of production at its Foxhol plant without adding grid capacity. Working with Schneider Electric, the site paired a new industrial electric boiler with unified power and process control, real-time energy visibility, and dynamic load management across more than 1,000 data points—shifting load during peak demand and absorbing excess renewable energy when it’s available. 

This is an AI-generated podcast episode. Read the full featured article on ProFood World.

A country that recycles about 30% of its glass isn’t going to hit a 90% bottle return rate this decade. So what does a reuse system that works in the meantime actually look like?

Senior Editor Anne Marie Mohan sits down with Adam Rack, co-founder and COO of Revino, on building a refillable wine bottle system in Oregon and expanding it into California with a CalRecycle grant. He explains why standardizing the bottle had to come before everything else, the three return pipelines the company runs, what the glass industry hasn’t said out loud about the limits of lightweighting, and why treating EPR and bottle bill materials as separate policy worlds is a missed opportunity for reuse.

Is it smarter for big brands to pay EPR fees than to redesign packaging for every state?

On this week’s End of the Line, ProFood World Editor-in-Chief Derrick Teal is joined by Liz Cuneo, Sean Riley, and Matt Reynolds. Reynolds and Riley break down how EPR fees, eco-modulation, and early signs of state-to-state harmonization are shaping brand strategy. Cuneo also shares what bacterial cellulose facial masks could mean for packaging and drug delivery.

Materials don't usually come off a problematic list. So how did EPS transport packaging become the first one to manage it?

This episode unpacks the US Plastics Pact's decision to remove EPS transport packaging from its Problematic and Unnecessary Materials List, the first delisting since the list was created. It covers which three categories the carve-out actually covers and which EPS formats are untouched, why commercial distribution centers rather than curbside bins drive the recycling rate, how densification turned a material that's mostly air into a shippable commodity, and why none of it changes a thing about state law.

This is an AI-generated episode. Read the full featured article on Healthcare Packaging.

If a plant is reporting OEE above 100% while living with daily downtime and weekly quality losses, what exactly is that number measuring?

This episode argues that OEE has become a scoreboard when it should be a diagnostic. It covers how manipulated baselines produce impossible scores, why a packaging jam is easy to count but a humidity-driven drop in powder flowability isn't, what real-time PLC data exposes that a clipboard never will, and why the shift with the worst number is sometimes the one that actually fixed something.

This is an AI-generated episode. Read the full featured article on ProFood World.

How do you put a fragrance on a carton when the embossing die applies exactly the kind of pressure designed to release it?

This episode breaks down a Packaging World interview with Opella packaging innovation lead Heidi Graham on the Icy Hot Revive & Recovery carton, where the scratch-and-sniff lives in a clear spot varnish rather than a sticker. It covers why a pressure-sensitive label was ruled out on recyclability grounds, how microencapsulated fragrance oil rides through a standard flexo press with no new coating heads, the narrow embossing window press operators had to find, and why thousands of miles of freight vibration won't set the scent off but a fingernail will.

This is an AI-generated podcast episode. Read the full featured article on Packaging World.

What happens when all that plant-floor data finally becomes useful? 

After a long week in Chicago, the End of the Line crew unpacks the biggest themes from PACK EXPO. 

Chief editors Sean Riley, Liz Cuneo, Matt Reynolds, and Derrick Teal are joined by PMMI Media Group Associate Editor Casey Flanagan. They discuss how AI is turning operational and packaging-materials data into something operators and brands can act on, from conversational assistants built into manufacturing workflows to platforms that organize packaging data for state EPR reporting. 

Pharma packaging works under stricter rules than almost anything else on the show floor. So why does so much of what’s built for it end up in food and beverage?

Editor-in-chief Liz Cuneo and Packaging World's Matt Reynolds report from day four of PACK EXPO International on AI inspection systems that learn to spot defects no one programmed them to find, closures that combine child resistance, tamper evidence and desiccant in a single cap, and cold chain shippers designed for the direct-to-consumer GLP-1 boom.

They also cover why pharma’s sustainability gains are coming in secondary and tertiary packaging rather than primary.

Everyone agreed the industry needed more data. What happens when the machines start telling you what to do with it?

Derrick Teal and Casey Flanagan report from day two of PACK EXPO International on inspection systems pairing detection with AI-generated recommendations, plant-isolated language models, and agentic assistants taking items off a supply chain planner’s list. 

They also cover approaches to cobot safety sensing, why the humanoid robots that were everywhere at Interpack aren't as present at Chicago, and what several exhibitors told them about next year’s show in Las Vegas.

What does a trend look like once it’s a machine on a show floor?

Matt Reynolds and Anne Marie Mohan sit down on day one of PACK EXPO International with what they found in the first few hours: a dry forming platform that lays fiber where it’s needed instead of cutting it out of a web, paper barrier structures built through supplier partnerships rather than a single material, a square food container that fits more units on a pallet and won’t rotate out of view on shelf, and a thermal inkjet printing GS1 codes fast enough for Sunrise 2027.