Indian packaging market to reach $ 73 billion by 2020

The packaging industry in India is expected to reach $ 73 billion in 2020 from $ 32 billion in FY 15, according to a report prepared by FICCI and Tata Strategic Management Group (TSMG) on plastic industry titled ‘Plastic packaging: The sustainable choice’. In the coming years, Indian packaging industry is anticipated to register 18 percent annual growth rate, with the flexible packaging and rigid packaging expected to grow annually at 25 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
 
The Indian packaging industry constitutes about 4 percent of the global packaging industry. The per capita packaging consumption in India is quite low at 4.3 kgs, compared to countries like Germany and Taiwan where it is 42 kgs and 19 kgs respectively. However, organised retail and boom in e-commerce, which offer huge potential for future growth of retailing, is giving a boost to the packaging sector.
 
Today, plastics are the material of choice in packaging for the sectors such as FMCG, food and beverages, pharmaceuticals etc. Globally, plastics comprise of 42 percent of packaging with the combination of rigid and flexible plastics in packaging. Plastics are used heavily for packaging due to innovative visual appeal for customer attraction and convenience. Additionally, they improve the hygiene quotient and shelf-life of the products especially in food and beverages segment.
 
“As plastics possess versatile properties it can help us do more with less. One such property is light weight. As plastics are light in weight, they have a high product to package ratio which results in lighter weighed end product. For example, only 1.5 pounds of flexible plastics can deliver approximately 60 pounds of beverage; compared to three pounds of aluminium or 50 pounds of glass,” said the FICCI-TSMG report.
 
Thus, plastic packaging enables in shipping more products with less packaging material. And also brings down the fuel consumption and the overall transportation cost.
 
  Besides this, plastics can be reused and recycled. Plastics, which have low energy requirements during production, consume about 25 percent less energy in production compared to other alternatives. This results in lower emission of CO2 gas. Thus, when compared to glass or aluminium plastics results in lighter environmental footprint.
 
According to the FICCI-TSMG report, India is a growing market for plastics and consumes about 12.8 million metric tonnes (MMT) of plastics annually against global consumption of 285 MMT per year. The plastics and polymer consumption is growing at an average rate of 10 percent. About 30,000 processing units with 113,000 processing machines have created manufacturing capacity of 30 MMT per annum in India. This has been achieved with a 13 percent CAGR of processing capacity during last 5 years. The industry has invested $5 billion in the machinery and it is expected to invest $ 10 billion more for increasing the capacity during the next 5 years.
 
The per capita consumption of polymers in India during 2014-15 was just 10.5 kg as compared to 109 kg in USA, 45 kg in China and 32 kg in Brazil. “India is expected to be among the top ten packaging consumers in the world by 2016. The low level of per capita plastics consumption in India is indicative of the massive growth potential of the plastic industry. Given the rising consumerism and modern lifestyles, it is expected that per capita consumption will be doubled in the next five years,” said the report.