On September 19th, 2019, FIPDes students at Lund University participated in annual Top Packaging Summit at Best Western Malmö Arena Hotel organized by Packbridge. This year’s conference was focused on value chain perspective on circular economy. The event consisted of interactive and very interesting talks from experts from various background, such as food and packaging companies, European Commission representative, consultants, and retailers. The talks were followed by start-up pitches, as the competition had been started from March 2019 and the final pitch was conducted on the day of Packaging Summit. There were 12 teams presenting their business in various aspects related to packaging and sustainability.

The morning session consisted of talks related to different packaging materials and its contribution to circular economy. The session was started by paper packaging discussion, followed by cans, plastic, and glass packaging, then ended by the talk from European Commission representative about EU climate policy. The session was proceeded by panel discussion where we could throw questions to be discussed by the speakers.

Coffee break was always inserted in between the sessions, not only because Fika is an important thing in every Swedish event, but also it was the time for networking. We could approach and talk to anyone either to discuss about the topic that was talked about during the session or simply to get to know different major players in the industry.
In the second session, there were another 3 talks related mainly to circular economy. The session was ended by an interactive session, where we were paired with anyone we had not talked to and we needed to discuss about specific topic in group. It was a great opportunity to discuss and exchange opinions about related topic, wrote it on the post-it, and then mapped our ideas in a big piece of paper. Thanks to that activity, we got to interact with almost everyone in the room.

After a delicious lunch, we proceeded to the afternoon session about more diverse topics, such as circular packaging, packaging megatrends, recycling design, and entrepreneurship. It was also the time to listen to pitch from 12 different teams who brought some fresh ideas and innovations to the industry. We got to vote for the best pitch and the real winner would be decided by the juries that consist of various packaging companies’ representatives.

It was indeed an intense day from morning until evening, full of interesting, surprising, and eye-opening insights about the current issues and challenges in packaging industry. As we were the only students in the room, we got the chance to directly interact with the main players of the industry. We discussed with different stakeholders and built networks with them. It was definitely an amazing event, thanks to FIPDes that gave us the opportunity to participate in it!