The business ecosystem linked to packaging as a supplier or user has a new space to exchange ideas, find out about trends and promote professional networking. We’re talking about “Packaging Dialogues”, an initiative by Fira de Barcelona’s Salon Hispack and IQS Executive Education, which will be taking place in four Spanish cities (Valencia, Madrid, Seville and Barcelona), thanks to the collaboration of technological centres and educational entities from these places. The first session will be held on Thursday 8 February in Valencia, where they will debate the key points for manufacturing more sustainable packaging with an aim to reducing environmental impact while at the same time improving consumer perception.

From January to April, “Packaging Dialogues” will address issues that make packaging a linchpin for improving business results at various conferences and round tables. In this regard, they will discuss the contribution of packaging in areas such as sustainability, logistics, use experience and also paper, which is becoming more and more relevant in packaging as a sales and communication factor.

The director of Hispack, Xavier Pascual, explains that the main objective of this new forum is to “strengthen business knowledge about packaging, which is an increasingly decisive aspect of any business’s global strategy, and to promote networking and the exchange of ideas between professionals of both supplier and packaging user sectors.”

In the same vein, the director of IQS Executive Education, Lluís Miravitlles, underlines the importance of training and continuous updating of knowledge, “especially that of those technical profiles associated with production, R&D, operations, quality, logistics, environment and sales, who have to maintain and share a transversal vision of both the company’s activity and changes in the market, which is why it is crucial that they understand packaging better.”

The “Packaging Dialogues” cycle begins on 8 February at the AINIA technological centre in Paterna, with a conference on how to offer the consumer more sustainable packaging solutions. It will share inspiring success stories such as those of Dulcesol and Danone, and different strategies to enable packaging to be involved in improving environmental impact indicators.

It will continue on 8 March in Madrid within the framework of Farmaforum, with a session focused on convenience packaging applied in the pharmaceutical sector. On 22 March, it will then go to the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, where they will debate strategies to add value to agri-food products through packaging and, finally, it will end at IQS in Barcelona on 10 April, with a conference about packaging and e-commerce. Registration for participation is free and can be done on the Hispack website.

“Packaging Dialogues” forms part of the calendar of “Pack Experience” training and sectorial events promoted by Hispack, the leading fair in the packaging and POS sector in Spain and one of the most important ones in Europe in its speciality area. In the next edition, which will take place from 8 to 11 May at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Via venue, Hispack expects to bring together 700 direct exhibitors in 35,000 net square metres of exhibition area, and it will have an wide training programme on various aspects of packaging.

For their part, IQS Executive Education is a university division of the Chemical Institute of Sarrià (IQS), who offers specialised executive training for professionals and companies in the areas of Packaging, Purchasing, SMEs, the Food Chain and Management in different technical areas of the company. Its priority is to respond to the training needs of companies’ senior professionals, from both the viewpoint of recycling and updating and that of professional development.

Barcelona, 18 January 2018

View the programme for the “Packaging Dialogues” cycle here