It has been just over a year since we ceased publication of PACKAGING REVIEW SA. The decision to close that journal was taken largely due to the publication’s own identity crisis, being a mish-mash of content and advertising aimed at both packaging raw material converters and finished product suppliers, meaning it battled to serve any real purpose to either its readers or advertisers over the years. A further consideration was the role of publishing that sort of product, with the identical database readers and the same content, had been taken over by a new iteration of PACKAGING REVIEW.
The present lack of any credible, dedicated publication for food and beverage, or pharmaceutical and cosmetics packaging professionals, as well as packaging printers, has been clearly expressed in the numerous requests received from readers of our FOOD REVIEW; PHARMACEUTICAL & COSMETIC REVIEW; and GRAPHIX journals, as well as the associated advertisers. As a reader from one of SA’s largest food manufacturers recently put to me: “I am a packaging specialist in the food industry, so I don’t want to read about packaging technology that has nothing to do with, and never will have any application in, the products my company manufactures. Let alone be inundated with loads of inane pictures and information about events that mean absolutely nothing to me. When will you take what you do so well in the pages of FOOD REVIEW and produce a publication with packaging content tailored to the industry your journal serves?” The underlying question revolves around how we can satisfy this very clear need in the market better than we ever did with PACKAGING REVIEW or through the packaging features that regularly appear within this journal.
PACKAGING REVIEW is back, but this time, as a supplement to your favourite journal, dedicated to the unambiguous packaging trends, news, technology and opinion of interest to you in the food and beverage industry. As a specialist business-to-business publisher, our key role is to refine the clutter and offer readers information pertaining specifically to their profession – after all, the packaging of pharmaceuticals is markedly different to the packaging of many food products and packaging printing is a specialised field in itself.
So, we’ve listened, but it’s not PACKAGING REVIEW as you remember it – it’s PACKAGING REVIEW-on-steroids for the food and beverage manufacturing industry. You’ll see we’ve focused on packaging only as it’s relevant to companies involved with food and beverage manufacture, bringing you nothing but the best reporting from around the world in packaging technology and innovation. In other words, everything you want to know about packaging that affects you, and nothing that doesn’t!
We hope you enjoy the supplement, as well as the various new additions we have recently rolled out and will continue to over the coming months as we listen to your feedback and work to produce the very best and most relevant journal we can that adds value to your business by keeping you informed, while also saving you time and money.
Greg Hughes, CEO: Infixion Media