Transformation is in Huhtamaki’s DNA. Over the last 100 years, we have evolved from a conglomerate into a global packaging business, serving the most prominent brands in food on-the-go, food on-the-shelf and health care products around the world. Today, we face unprecedented shifts in consumer behavior, sustainability, digitalization and our supply chain.
For us transforming our business means doing four things: defining our purpose, embedding sustainability in everything we do, becoming driven by digital technologies and data, and innovating for smart packaging.
Defining our purpose – We believe in protecting food, people and the planet
Food packaging plays a critical role in enabling our basic sustenance in today’s modern cities, and is an integral part of our culture, bringing food to the table every day for families, communities and friends.
We believe that the value of packaging is much more than its impact on the planet. It plays fundamental role in securing food availability, food safety and hygiene and preventing food waste. Packaging enables well-being and convenience for people around the world.
Our purpose is to protect food, people and the planet.
Embedding sustainability in everything we do
Protecting the planet requires embedding sustainability in everything we do, from our operations, product innovations, to investment decisions. Sustainability for us is based on defining an end-to-end approach in terms of what our products are made from, how they are dealt with after use, and how we operate our own assets.
Becoming driven by digital technologies and data
The pace of digitalization is accelerating. We believe that digitalization will reshape operations, change the way we interact with our customers and give rise to new business models that will change our value chain. Our digitalization program focuses on improving our operational performance through shop-floor digitalization, improving ease of doing business by digitalizing customer transactions, and enabling smart packaging as a source of new growth.
Innovating for smart packaging
Technologies for smart packaging have been available for some years, providing digital identity – the trick is scaling these up in meaningful applications. We believe smart packaging will play an important role in creating sustainable and safe packaging solutions and business models for the food industry. Smart packaging holds a promise for cross-value chain challenges like sustainability, safety and engagement and requires cross-industry business model innovation efforts.
For sustainability, digital packaging identities can mean efficient and automated recycling. Product traceability and tamper evidence will enable safety. Smart packaging can be part of digital media helping to drive societal change by becoming a vehicle for information on health, environment, sustainability, and recycling.
Innovating for smart packaging solutions requires large cross-industry efforts. This will allow us to become providers of more holistic solutions to today’s sustainability and safety challenges.
This blog is based on Marina Madanat’s presentation in Business Strategies in Digital Transformation Event on May 4th, 2021. Watch the full presentation and Q&A: