A report by Visiongain indicates that the global glass packaging market will reach a value of $36.8 billion (bn) in 2013.
This growth is as a result of the emerging economies demanding more premium food, beverage, healthcare and personal care products that are packaged in glass.
However, growth in the glass packaging market will be limited as companies will face rising amounts of pressure and competition from other packaging materials trying to take market share and from producers looking to other packaging materials in order to cut down production costs.
The glass packaging market is therefore forecast by Visiongain to record modest continuous growth over the next decade, as glass as a packaging material has little room to manoeuvre in new markets and becomes synonymous with luxury and premium products.
The Visiongain author of the Global Glass Packaging Market 2012 - 2022 report commented that: “Glass is and will remain a key material for packaging but it will lose out to flexible plastic packaging, especially PET over the next 10 years. This loss in the glass packaging market share will only affect the lower tier products that glass currently packages and will act to enforce glass as the packaging material of choice for any product wishing to portray an image of luxury or natural qualities. Luxury products are currently being soaked up by the East Asian and South American markets and this is where the majority of demand for glass packaging comes from. This will continue to be the case until Europe and America recover towards the end of the decade.”