Spouted Pouches

Over the past several years, Japan has seen growing demand for large refill pouches, and this trend has continued to date. Formerly, the use of spouted pouches was limited to specific items, such as detergents and shampoos, among everyday necessaries. However, spouted pouches are currently used for a wider variety of products, including gardening supplies and car goods. Beverage pouches were previously used mainly for energy drinks, but currently they are also used for a wider range of products, such as health and beauty care beverages. Demand for them is higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic. We have also experienced various changes, including our products being more often used by distribution companies for their private brands.
Compared to the Japanese market, the European and Americas markets have fewer refillable pouches and other products of similar kinds. However, we have received an increasing number of inquiries due to plastic reduction and other environmental challenges, as well as the benefits of flexible pouches, including their preserving effect, squeezability, and disposability. We predict that new trends will emerge in Europe, where environmental regulations have already come into effect. Meanwhile, in ASEAN countries, demand for spouted refill pouches is gradually increasing. In addition, since small-volume pouches are used for many products and are causing waste problems, we predict that they will be replaced with larger pouches in the future.

While brand owners are launching initiatives to achieve their environmental goals, legal regulations are expected to spread globally. We believe that it is important to prepare a wide lineup of environmentally friendly packages, including mono-material ones, ones containing recycled materials, ones containing bio-materials, and paper packages. These are all difficult to process, but we hope to utilize the Fuji Seal Group's strength of being able to quickly verify both machinery and packaging materials to meet the needs of customers and society, who have set environmental goals, thereby contributing to realization of a sustainable future.

With a general trend toward plastic reduction against the backdrop of environmental issues, creating the next core product requires us to engage in packaging development that helps replace bottles with pouches, just as with the spread of refill pouches. To achieve this, we must form alliances with partner companies that are suitable for each project, regardless of the filling machine manufacturer or industry (not competitors), in order to improve development speed and create packaging that is safe for consumers, easy to use, and has a low environmental impact.
We predict that demand for pouches will continue to increase in the future, so we are planning to build a new factory in Yamagata to further expand our production capacity and create a manufacturing system with less environmental impact.
We hope to take advantage of this business opportunity, focus on developing products that will become the pillars of the next generation, and provide new value to the market of the future.