The UK’s packaging industry is being called upon to promote careers within it, in order to attract more talented young people into the sector, support its development and secure its future, following concerns that packaging-related vacancies are becoming increasingly difficult to fill.

Tom Garsed, Marketing, Design & Innovation Director with Graphic Packaging UK, has issued the call to target young people leaving full-time education and make them aware of the exciting opportunities that exist in the packaging industry. In order to do this, however, Garsed believes that the opportunities must be supported by appropriate training and education programmes.

Happily, some success has already been achieved with the formation of a new Packaging Steering Group, known as The PackFuture Initiative.

According to Jo Stephenson, director of Women in Packaging UK: “The PackFuture initiative has successfully developed a Postgraduate Certificate in ‘Advances in Food and Beverage Packaging’ to be launched at Chester University.

“The group has a number of courses in development to fulfil a complete packaging curriculum, including, eventually, a BSc and MSc in packaging technology. However, we need a lot of people from the industry to make all this happen.”

At TrakRap, we’ve taken on several apprentices over the years in order to offer them fresh opportunities and train them to our own high standards. Having had great success with this approach, we’re supporting The PackFuture Initiative and hope they enjoy the same success that we have.