Adelaide-based innovative food packaging and print solutions company, Detpak, has been named fast food giant KFC’s Supplier of the Year for Australia. KFC serves in excess of two million meals a week.

The world’s biggest offset press manufacturer, Heidelberg, says it has seen a good start to the new financial year, thanks to the recovery in Asia, and continuing growth in the packaging segment.

Orora Beverage is installing the region’s first Velox digital, high-speed, full-colour, can printing system, enabling customisation of can design and decoration, and fast speed to market. It is keeping its offset litho can printing presses, and will run both side-by-side.

Sustainability demands will push surging sales of cartonboard, microflute and miniflute packaging over the next five years, according to Smithers, providing strong growth prospects for carton printing, with packaging cartonboard predicted to grow by an attractive 35 per cent to 2028.

Flexible packaging operation ePac has launched the ePac Born Green educational campaign, to address what it says is the critical need for its customer base to become knowledgeable and confident about their own sustainability goals.

The move to sustainable packaging is set to be turbo-charged, with the federal government taking the landmark decision to step in and legislate on packaging waste.

Press giant Heidelberg is launching a new webfed flexo carton printing press, the Boardmaster, which it says will meet the rapid pivot by brands away from plastics to fibre-based packaging.

Bobst has enhanced its middle-range folder-gluers with the implementation of the Sphere machine interface, which it says is a decisive step into the future of folding-gluing.

The joint venture Koenig & Bauer Durst says its first VariJet 106 B1 inkjet folding carton press is installed at a beta site in Europe, and will be running by the end of the month.

Bobst has acquired 70 per cent of the equity of Dücker Robotics, which specialises in the use of robots in both loading and palletising in the corrugated board sector and in the folding carton industry.

The world’s biggest packaging company, Amcor, has downgraded its full year profit forecast by five per cent, as consumers rein in their spending around the world due to inflationary pressures.

The Australian arm of ePac Flexible Packaging is launching an in-house design service, aimed at supporting brands of all sizes to optimise packaging design and branding.

Ball & Doggett is launching ecoporium, its new sustainable packaging online resource for brands, printers and converters, at a special free event in Melbourne on 1 June. The launch features a quartet of five minute keynotes, followed by a Q&A session. Places are limited to 200.

Press giant Koenig & Bauer, and packaging solutions developer Sealed Air Corporation have signed a non-binding letter of intent to expand their strategic partnership for digital printing machines in packaging.

Smithers says flexible mono-material plastic packaging film will grow at 4.1% CAGR for the next five years, with pharma, personal care, and fresh food to see the highest gains.

Mars Bars, Milky Ways and Snickers are now being wrapped in recycled paper, developed and printed by Amcor, replacing the plastics wrapping the popular confectionary products have always had.