US stand-up pouch market to record strong growth to 2018

The US stand-up pouch market will grow at a rate of around seven percent each year to 2018, according to a new study by PCI Films Consulting.

PCI Films’ The US Market for Stand-up Pouches to 2018 report states that the market has seen dramatic growth over the past five years, increasing by 50 percent in unit volume terms and approaching 17 billion units in 2013.

This will reach 24 billion units in 2018, PCI Films predicts, growing at a rate at least twice as fast as volume growth expected in the US flexible packaging market as a whole.

This latest report follows PCI Films’ claim that growth in the value of the European flexible packaging industry slowed last year, with weaker demand and lower raw material inflationary pressures suppressing the market.

Future increases in volume in the US are expected to come from a wide variety of end uses, such as frozen foods and fruit compotes, frozen spirits, cocktails, baby food, shredded and diced cheese, laundry and dishwashing refill packs and soups. Other opportunities are only in the early stages of development but pouches used to pack motor oils, dietary meal solutions and possibly olive oil and fresh vegetables are also forecast to grow in volume.

The growing interest in pouches has been satisfied on the supply-side by the expanding infrastructure of toll converters and contract packers as well as advances in pack resealability and slider technologies, the report states.

Pre-made pouches retain a majority share of the US stand-up pouch market with printed laminate for form-fill-seal applications currently accounting for less than a quarter of total pouch units.

Returning to the present day, PCI Films added that beverages and pet food are the largest end use categories for stand-up pouches in the US, each accounting for around a third of demand, closely followed by human food applications (pictured, below).

Stimulating the recent growth in pouches has been the drive to replace plastic and glass bottles and cans, packaging cost reduction and consumer convenience, it said.

Report author Julian Lozowick said: ‘The most significant increases in volume have come only in the last two years, particularly in liquid products within the human foods non-retort category, such as in the packing of baby foods and fruit compote and purees. The use of pouches for dry food products in general has been growing more steadily, but even here some categories have seen rapid recent growth.’

Read more about the flexible packaging market here