State of the Folding Carton Industry

Ed Wiegand, executive vice president of The MATLET Group, similarly notes that the consumer-product market's "insatiable appetite" for design changes has shrunk packaging life cycles. At the same time, he says, an explosion of product varieties—for example, the iconic dandruff shampoo that began as one product but is now available in 13 different formulations—has led to a proliferation of SKUs, each manufactured and packaged in correspondingly smaller quantities.