The Forecast: More Plastic Food Containers

As long as Americans keep eating, the demand for food containers should be steady to upward. Research company The Freedonia Group, Cleveland, forecasts a 3.3 percent annual food container growth rate through 2011, with both rigid plastics and pouches growing in market share.

The research firm cites “performance attributes and heightened demand for smaller package sizes” as reasons that pouches and plastic containers “will continue to supplant paperboard, metal and glass counterparts.”

The company’s report, entitled “Food Containers: Rigid & Flexible,” forecasts 3.3 percent annual growth in the dollar amount spent on food packaging between 2006 and 2011, a slight dip from the 3.9 percent annual growth experienced between 2001 and 2006.

In the five-year forecast, dollars spent on rigid plastic containers are expected to increase 6.3 percent yearly, while spending on pouches will also grow, but by 4.4 percent.

Spending for paperboard packaging is predicted to grow at a more modest 1.6 percent per year, while spending on metal containers will also grow slowly—at 0.7 percent per year.

Spending on glass containers, meanwhile, is predicted to drop by 1.5 percent per year.