Tokyo Pack 2018 saw Japan’s packaging industry working to scale back the nation’s huge food losses, finding ways into international marketplaces as domestic consumption dwindles with the population size and strategies to overcome a labour shortage, all the while trying to do right by the environment.
A special Tokyo Pack edition marked 50 years of the Asia Packaging Federation (APF) in the city of its birth with an AsiaStar awards ceremony rounded off with traditional Japanese dancing, and a seminar which highlighted Asian issues and the global, creeping metamorphosis of production, distribution and retailing, catalysed by advancing technologies with unforeseeable possibilities and unpredictable timelines.
Individual badge-holding visitors and exhibitors totalled 62,488 over the four-day show and peaked at 17,065 on the final day. They included overall 3,881 overseas visitors, which was 11.4 per cent higher than the previous edition and for the Japan Packaging Institute team of organisers this was proof of a growing international profile it has worked towards for the past two years.
On assignment for PKN, Joanne Hunter delivers Tokyo Pack’s top take-outs.
