By Trina Tan
After a Covid-blighted start to the decade, it appears that Japan’s packaging industry is well on the road to recovery – but plastics continue to lag behind paper and paperboard-based products.
In 2024, the industry was valued at $47.03 billion (¥6,905bn), with packaging materials and containers worth $43.48bn (¥6,382bn), leaving packaging machinery to make up the remaining $3.55bn (¥522bn), according to the latest statistics released by the Japan Packaging Institute (JPI).
That translates to a total packaging materials and containers volume of 17.79 million tonnes, and 259,649 units of packaging machinery.
While far from spectacular, the 3.9 per cent growth over the previous 12 months is still encouraging and indicates a positive future. In 2020, the industry contracted by 4.4 per cent – reflecting the wider global malaise in the wake of Covid. In the following year, the industry recovered slightly, by 2.8 per cent, before jumping 6.4 per cent in 2022 as society returned to some sort of normality.
While the industry recalibrated to grow by just 1.3 per cent in 2023, last year’s growth rate indicates it is on more stable footing.
By value, most of the overall growth for Japan’s packaging industry has been fuelled by materials and containers. The packaging machinery sector has been more subdued, with average value rates falling by 2.3 per cent between 2020 to 2022. Demand for Japanese packaging machinery mostly returned in 2023, growing by 3.2 per cent, and last year it increased by 3.5 per cent.
When examining packaging machinery statistics, JPI categorises them by paper and paperboard converting machines, bag-making machines, and packaging and packing machines, which are further divided into outer packaging and packing machines (i.e. gluing, taping, strapping machines, boxes, uncasers, etc) and unit and inner packaging machines, which include fillers, bottlers, pouch form/fillers, container form/fillers, labellers, shrink packaging systems, and vacuum packaging machines.
With a 48.1 per cent share, paper and paperboard packaging products remained the largest segment of Japan’s packaging materials and containers market by value in 2024. This was followed by plastics packaging products at 27.6 per cent and metal packaging products at 13.9 per cent.
By volume, paper and paperboard packaging products took the lion’s share at 67 per cent, followed by plastics packaging products at 18.1 per cent.
While the volume of paper and paperboard packaging products reduced from 12.821m/t to 11.912m/t between 2022 and 2024, its material value grew considerably, from $18.7 million (¥2.75bn) to $20.9m (¥3.068bn). By comparison, plastics packaging products’ value and volume both decreased. By volume the sector dropped by 3.553m/t to 3.225m/t, while by value it fell from $12.31m (¥1.808bn) to $11.98m (¥1.76bn).
Paper in favour
Consumer demand and a renewed focus on circular economy principles have resulted in a shift towards paper and paperboard packaging products, particularly as an alternative to plastics packaging.
Japan’s waste collection, separation and recycling infrastructure is one of the most sophisticated in the world. Consumers and businesses across the country have waste separation practices ingrained into their daily lives. Almost all packaging products in Japan used across all end-use sectors have features that enable easy separation and clean recycling (i.e. easy-tear container labels, easy-separate caps and closures, clear PET bottles, etc). Additionally, plastics materials have greater packaging protection barrier properties compared with paper and paperboard.
However, to the typical Japanese consumer and business, paper is recognised for its biodegradability and is seen as being easier to recycle when measured up against plastics.
In addition, the Japanese have a long tradition of using natural and biodegradable materials such as washi paper, bamboo and rice straw. This familiarity makes it easy for consumers to gravitate towards such natural packaging materials.
It is also important to note that the majority of Japanese people practice the Shinto religion, a polytheistic and animistic faith centred on the worship of spirits or deities found in natural elements, which emphasises the importance of living in harmony with nature. Shinto is an integral part of Japanese culture, so even those who do not practice it have its principles ingrained in them. One could say that caring for the environment is a key part of the Shinto faith and, by extension, the Japanese consumer mindset.
It hasn’t helped that global plastics waste issues over the recent decade or so, particularly marine pollution, have given plastics packaging quite the bad reputation with consumers, whose often kneejerk reactions have been to shun the material when considering environmental impacts during their purchasing decision-making. Japan also announced at the 2019 G20 Osaka Summit its Osaka Blue Ocean Vision – a commitment to reduce marine plastics litter to zero by 2050.
The Japanese government’s ambitious targets for plastics waste reduction and recycling, including increasing the use of (more expensive) bio-based plastics and aiming for complete plastics packaging recycling by 2030, have also pushed brand owners and packaging companies alike to seek ‘easier’ alternatives.
Coupled with advances in Japanese paper material technology, including barrier features for paper materials that offer protection properties such as water and oxygen impermeability that’s comparable with plastics films, paper is becoming a more viable option for many end-use sectors. At Tokyo Pack in 2024, the last edition of the country’s major packaging exhibition, a quick glance through the packaging solutions presented with the top awards in innovation show that the majority were paper and paperboard-based, used in personal care, household, industrial and even food and beverage segments.
Stick approach
The Japanese government’s environmental legislative frameworks are, in essence, stick-approaches for the industry. And we all know such strategies often have the inverse effect of driving companies away from the very direction the government would like them to move towards.
To lure Japanese consumers, and in turn brand owners and manufacturers, away from paper and paperboard packaging, much education is needed – including a propaganda drive highlighting the potential positive impacts that plastics packaging can have when innovative research is invested into them and when its waste is properly handled.
Bio-based plastics also have a great deal of potential in Japan because of their natural sources and good packaging properties. It is helpful that the government’s Resource Strategy for Plastics 2019 has set a clear goal of introducing approximately 2m/t of bio-based plastics by 2030. While ambitious, this target provides a strong impetus for industry and research.
The Roadmap for Bioplastics Introduction (2021) also outlines strategies to increase the demand and supply of bioplastics, focusing on stimulating innovation, diversifying raw materials (especially non-food biomass), and optimising production costs.
Major Japanese chemical companies such as Teijin, Toray Industries, Toyota Industries, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Kaneka Corporation are actively involved in bioplastics research, development, and production, expanding their facilities and product portfolios.
Many are actively working to secure raw materials and expand their supply chains for bioplastics. Mitsubishi Chemicals, for example, is looking into non-food biomass as a feedstock to boost the sustainability of their bioplastics.
One exciting area is in the development of bio-based ‘drop-in’ plastics such as bio-based PE that can be used in existing recycling systems. Another is in the development of novel bioplastics, including those that rapidly biodegrade in natural environments. Kaneka Corporation is now working on the use of polyhydroxybutyrate, a material crafted from microorganisms that can break down completely in seawater or soil – a potentially great solution to marine plastics waste.
