In the real world converters live in, it’s often a challenge just making customers happy, keeping the machines running, having the right people to do the work, and getting orders out the door on time.

But in a perfect world, wouldn’t it be great to get a peek at the packages of tomorrow? To see what your customers will want you to print, slit, and laminate next year, or the year after that? Wouldn’t it help you plan your next machinery purchase, or know what kind of experience your next operator should have?

That’s why the smartest converters go to packaging shows like Pack Expo, starting October 29th at McCormick Place in Chicago (www.pei2006.packexpo.com). There, they can see what happens to their rolls and cut stacks after they leave the dock. They can also check up on what’s around the corner, view the latest in materials, shapes, and designs—how future packages are born. Working backward from consumer desires, converters get a sense of how their own businesses will change in the coming years.

For those who can’t spare the five days in Chicago—or even for those who make it to the show—we’ve gathered some intelligence of our own, with help from sister publication Packaging Digest, to offer a glimpse of what’s influencing future packages.

Lately, smart packaging means RFID-equipped packaging and labels to many converters. Yet smart packs can be as simple, and ingenious, as self-steaming flex-pack bags.

According to Packaging Digest, Birds Eye Foods’ new Steamfresh vegetables, in nine varieties, provide what the company says is a foolproof way to microwave flash-frozen vegetables with perfect results every time in minutes, without any water boiling or chopping. The precut, frozen vegetables come in 12-oz custom film bags. Each one becomes a steaming vessel as it puffs up under the pressure of the steam created within when the package is heated in the microwave oven.

Through patented steaming technology, a vent called the SteamFast® valve releases built-up steam within the puffed bag, allowing the steam to circulate evenly throughout the cooking process.

The bag is made with a unique steam channel built into the film and the ends of each package, which are sealed during filling. When the bag is placed in the microwave, steam pressure builds up, and the Steamfresh bag inflates. When the pressure reaches the desired levels, the ends of the channel open and release the steam pressure.

SteamFast® technology ensures the package maintains pressure during the cooking process and systematically releases the steam pressure during the microwave-cooking process. This ensures the vegetables are cooked rapidly and evenly.

Bagstock consists of a reverse-gravure-printed polyethylene terephthalate\adhesive\polypropylene structure from Excelsior Packaging Group.

When can less be more? Packaging, that is. New All® Small & Mighty™ provides a three-times-concentrated version of Unilever’s All® brand detergent, cleaning as many loads as a 100-oz bottle “but in a smaller, more compact package that’s easier to pour, store and carry,” explains Helayna Minsk, director of marketing for Unilever. According to Packaging Digest, as in many other consumer trends, retailer Wal-Mart had a hand in this one—and packagers and converters alike may do well to take a stroll through their own neighborhood store and think about packaging from the retail giant’s point of view.

“We were looking for a way to lighten the consumer’s load, literally and figuratively,” Minsk says. “The key was to do this in a way that didn’t compromise the great cleaning they got from nonconcentrated All.” Designing the bottle to address consumers’ issues with big, bulky detergent bottles, Unilever worked with Wal-Mart to make the bottle more shelf-friendly and more sustainable. According to Minsk, the 32-oz mini bottle uses less plastic in its packaging, 64 percent less water in its formula than regular detergent and fits into smaller cases, saving on corrugated. And, she adds, it also takes less fuel to ship the smaller bottles because more can fit into each truck bound for the customers’ warehouse. According to Unilever’s website, this results in an annual savings of almost 500 million gal of water, 26 million gal of diesel fuel, 150 million lb of plastic and 750 million sq ft of corrugated.

At the retail level, because more of the smaller bottles can fit on-shelf, retailers realize cost savings in distribution, inventory and labor, according to the consumer-products giant.

The product’s custom, high-density PE bottle is from Graham Packaging Co. (www.grahampackaging.com) and is topped by a PP cap, also from Graham. An oriented polystyrene label is reverse-gravure-printed by Fort Dearborn Co. (www.fortdearborn.com).

Americans love their SUVs—and now, it seems, we’ve also fallen in love with the SUP. That stands for standup pouch. Although it’s been around for a few years, the SUP manages to continually re-invent itself with new bottom shapes, new constructions, and ever-more applications in food and beverage where it keeps muscling out other types of flexible packaging and folding cartons. And that’s why it remains a trend to watch, particularly if you are a flex-pack converter with your eyes on the future.

Take the SUP featured on page 46 of this issue, in the End Product Profile of the article entitled “High-tech film simplicity.” The new SUP for Cheez-It® Crisps® took over from the familiar box consumers associate with the Cheez-It brand, yet converter Alcan Packaging managed to make the glossy red pouch sturdy and rigid, and even incorporated a large bottom gusset so the pouch can be used as a portable serving dish. As a certain beer commercial making the rounds has it: “Sharing is caring.” And for more stats on current and future demand for the SUP, see this month’s Market Trends, “Value-Added Features to Push Pouches Ahead,” page 4.

And if you haven’t yet made plans to visit Pack Expo later this month, give it some thought. Failing that, grab the grocery list this weekend and plunge into the supermarket aisles. What you see there could spark ideas for your business for next year and beyond.