unPACKed with PMMI

Sustainability and supply chain, supply chain and sustainability. Over the past three years not a month has gone by where unPACKed didn't touch on one or both of these two issues. This episode approaches the issues from an entirely new angle.  Matthew Wright from Specright explains that the devil is in the data, and with proper data tools and management, companies can anticipate supply chain...

The Packaging and Processing Women’s Leadership Network takes over the unPACKed reins as OEM Magazine Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Neil hosts PPWLN’s new Learning Circle series. Lisa Propati, VP & GM at WLS, a ProMach brand, and guest speaker Bob Hersh, national managing principal at Grant Thorton, dive into business acumen with Neil, exploring why understanding the financial side of manufacturin...

The future is now in part six of unPaCKed’s six-part sustainability sit-down with Packaging World editors Anne Marie Mohan and Matt Reynolds. Bioplastics reads like an oxymoron, but the revolutionary new materials from renewable resources versus petroleum are indeed here to stay. Mohan and Reynolds cover sustainability and packaging materials daily and examine how sugar cane, corn, and even wood c...

Packaging World editors Anne Marie Mohan and Matt Reynolds return to unPACKed for the fifth episode of its six-part sustainability sit-down, turning the spotlight on monolayer materials. All plastics and foils are not created equal, and the complexity that allows them to protect food or beverages, for instance, also makes recycling significantly harder. Mohan and Reynolds cover sustainability and...

Part four of unPACKed’s six-part sustainability sit down with Packaging World editors Anne Marie Mohan and Matt Reynolds takes us to the world of reuse and refill. Reuse and refill is more than just the ubiquitous beverage containers everyone carries around to do their sustainability part. Mohan and Reynolds cover sustainability and packaging materials daily for Packaging World and discuss how reu...

As one of the oldest, if not the oldest, packaging materials, paper was also one of the earliest package types to be recycled and is the topic for part three of a six-part sustainability sit-down with Packaging World editors Anne Marie Mohan and Matt Reynolds. Mohan and Reynolds cover sustainability and packaging materials daily for Packaging World. The pair discuss how paper’s relative ease to re...

Aluminum is the topic for part two of a six-part sustainability sit-down with Packaging World editors Anne Marie Mohan and Matt Reynolds. Mohan and Reynolds cover sustainability and packaging materials daily for Packaging World and rank among the most knowledgeable in the industry on current trends and breakthroughs. The pair discuss how aluminum could be infinitely recyclable and why the general...

Advanced recycling kicks off part one of a six-part sustainability sit down with Packaging World editors Anne Marie Mohen and Matt Reynolds. Mohen and Reynolds cover sustainability and packaging materials daily for Packaging World and rank among the most knowledgeable in the packaging and processing industry on current trends and breakthroughs. In this episode, the pair discuss how advanced recycl...

For our 100th episode, unPACKed spoke about workforce initiatives with Pat Finlay, who serves as R&D Sr. Director of Global Beverages Packaging for one of the world's largest and most recognizable brands: PepsiCo. We couldn’t let a guest from a high-profile company like that leave without prodding him on PepsiCo’s current sustainability initiatives. Large companies will ultimately drive r...

How we communicate influences everything from sales, communication with our boss or employees, or even conversations at home with the family. Jeff Bloomfield has made a career out of teaching others what he’s learned about the biology, psychology, and physiology of the brain. He takes these complex topics and simplifies them, revealing that most people communicate with their customers using the wr...

UnPACKed welcomes a woman who has made a career out of breaking barriers in typically male-dominated positions, Super Bowl Referee Sarah Thomas. Thomas kicked down doors as the first woman in major college football, the first full-time female NFL referee, and the first-ever female referee at an NFL playoff game. While she didn’t set out to be a trailblazer, she recognizes that her role as a promin...

Culture, Culture, Culture. Every article on workforce issues deals with the importance of good company culture. On this episode, we sit down with the inventor of Culturetopia, Jason Young. He highlights the crucial role culture plays in staving off any remnants of the Great Resignation and breaks down his definition of culture and what he feels is good company culture based off of his previous sto...

In an era where employees jump from job to job, NextMapping founder Cheryl Cran has studied how a company's first impression during the onboarding process can lead to better employee retention. This 10 Time Author also speaks on how the future workplace will look and how leadership by managers immediately after onboarding can be the key to keeping employees for the long haul. Register for PAC...

The answer to how to solve the packaging and processing workforce crisis often remains incomplete. PepsiCo, the largest food company in the U.S., is doing its part to tackle workforce issues head-on, sponsoring many programs targeting the next generation of workers, like PACK EXPO’s PACK Challenge. PepsiCo R&D Sr. Director, Global Beverages Packaging Pat Finlay joins the unPACKed podcast to di...

In the third installment of our must-see technologies and trends from PACK EXPO International 2022, we welcome editor-in-chief of OEM Magazine, Stephanie Neil. Loyal listeners of unPACKed with PMMI all know by now that the weakening workforce is a stress across our entire industry, and each editor has touched on that in parts one and two. Stephanie tackles the issue from the point of view of the O...

After part one of our review of PACK EXPO covered trends and technologies focused on food processing and packaging at large, this episode of unPACKed with PMMI offers a pair of unique views from PMMI Media Group Editors. Keren Sookne from Healthcare Packaging provides highlights targeting the healthcare sector and Lilián Robayo from Mundo PMMI provides her view of top technologies applicable to he...

PACK EXPO International returned with a vengeance in 2022, surpassing numbers from the good old days when nobody was familiar with COVID-19, and pandemics were things you learned about in history class. While the show is in the books, unPACKed with PMMI discussed some of the trends and technologies seen on the show floor with PMMI Editors, Matt Reynolds from Packaging World and Michael Costa from...

Stephanie Neil, Editor-in-Chief of OEM Magazine interviews Packaging and Processing Women’s Leadership Network keynote speaker Dawn Hudson after she headlined the massively successful PPWLN breakfast at PACK EXPO International. Neil and Hudson detail her journey from the advertising industry to designing packages as a brand manager for Clairol to executive leadership roles at Pepsi and the NFL. Ev...

Automation use in packaging and processing continues to explode, with CPGs looking to improve operations while also coping with a labor shortage. On this episode of unPACKed with PMMI, Sean Spees from Bosch Rexroth joins us to discuss what CPGs should ask from automation suppliers to keep up with shifting consumer demands and, with that, how they can adapt their packaging and packaging lines to st...

One of the main drivers for AMERIPEN and PMMI’s upcoming 10 Year Packaging Material Compass is trying to understand packaging and packaging recovery, as the recycling community clamors to better understand and adapt to the future of packaging. AMERIPEN’s Kyla Fisher and PMMI’s Rebecca Marquez join the unPACKed with PMMI pod to explain the need for this tool to see into the future about potential l...

PMMI’s State of the Industry Report has long served as a reliable baseline of machinery shipment statistics incorporated into an in-depth report on the packaging machinery industry. PMMI vice president of market development Jorge Izquierdo offers a 30,000-foot view of his initial findings from the exhaustive report. After two years of unprecedented growth, Izquierdo predicts sustained growth, but...

The 2021 PMMI Business Intelligence Committee white paper Beverage Trends Driving Change explores how the dominant trends in the beverage market are shaping the future of beverage packaging and machine purchases. Hear Donna Ritson, president of DDR Communications, take a detailed look at how consumer, market, and production trends are influencing both the packaging choices at manufacturers and the...

Nobody thought when PMMI closed the curtain on PACK EXPO International 2018 that it would take four years to return to Chicago’s McCormick Place. This unPACKed with PMMI podcast welcomes PMMI vice president trade show Laura Thompson to remind everyone exactly why the PACK EXPO International in-person experience is so important to the global packaging and processing community. Thompson covers all o...

The future is now for cobots and robots in packaging and processing. Donna Ritson, president, DDR Communications takes a closer look at The Robot and Cobot Report from the PMMI Business Intelligence Committee. Ritson explores how robots and cobots are being utilized in manufacturing, where deployment has increased in packaging and processing and what more industry professionals need to further adv...

Seeing food recalls and the FDA in news headlines is always an ominous feeling for brand owners and consumers alike. Pet owners were on high alert when news broke earlier this summer that some pet food brands were self-recalling because of salmonella risk. At unPACKed with PMMI, we went straight to an expert to get to bottom of this latest scare, reaching out to Grace Danao from the Department of...