Bemis dominates flexible packaging in NAFTA region

Wisconsin-based flexible packaging and pressure sensitive label materials supplier Bemis dominates the flexible packaging converting industry in the NAFTA region, according to a survey of the North American flexible packaging market by industry intelligence firm PCI Films Consulting.
 
PCI Film’s North American Flexible Packaging Market to 2015 survey reported Bemis has a 20 percent share of the market in the US, Canada and Mexico, the three countries signed up to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
 
Bemis’s position was consolidated with the purchase of Alcan Packaging Food Americas in 2010, PCI Films said, and the company is now twice as large as its nearest competitor, Sealed Air Corporation, and three times the size of the number three supplier, Printpack.

 
PCI Films said Exopack and Hood Packaging each account for three percent of the market, with a host of other companies soaking up one or two percent of the market apiece, including Ampac, Amcor, Bryce, Clondalkin USA and Prolamina, a company which PCI Films suggested is set to see strong growth in the market.
 
PCI Films said the emergence of Prolamina Corporation via acquisitions and green field investment will create a major new force in the converting industry. With current annual turnover of around US$300 million in North America, Prolamina has ambitions to top US$2 billion in converted flexible packaging sales within the next few years, mostly through acquisitions, PCI Films said.
 
The NAFTA region’s flexible packaging market is relatively self-contained, PCI Films added, although imports, particularly from India and China, have now reached nearly two percent of demand and continue to grow. Exports outside the region run at less than one percent of regional production mostly destined for customers in Central and South America and Europe.