From Europe to South America, Australia to the U.S., the team has been on some serious adventures. Through the years they have met with brand owners, manufacturers, and engineers to talk about real-world global packaging challenges and how XPP is helping companies make progress toward sustainability without compromising production or performance.
If you’re working through packaging updates or trying to understand how other companies are handling changes to materials, regulations, and recycling, this episode gives you a peek behind the scenes.
Watch the full episode above or listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or our website. Want a sneak peak? Read on for a look at the biggest takeaways from the team’s global conversations.
Mike and Jonathan’s latest adventure consisted of a three-week stretch through Amsterdam, Berlin, Poznań (Poland), and Utrecht, with a quick detour to Croatia. The trip combined customer meetings, packaging trials, and a presentation at the Sustainable Packaging Summit in the Netherlands.
It’s not their first international trip, and it certainly won’t be their last, but this world tour gave them a great opportunity to connect with others in the industry (and they came home with some great stories!).
So what were the highlights? What did they learn from people around the world?
No matter where the team went, the one constant was the need to find a polystyrene alternative for form fill seal packaging. The specific motivations vary, including regulatory compliance, cost pressures, supply chain reliability, and more. But everyone is headed in the same direction.
As Mike explained, “The need to find sustainable packaging, especially around the replacement of polystyrene in form fill seal, is the common denominator no matter where you go.”
That’s why so many of these conversations are centered around XPP. It’s one of the few materials that meets technical requirements and sustainability goals without requiring companies to completely rework their production lines.
One of the most talked-about topics on this trip was the growing complexity of packaging regulations.
The rules are changing rapidly, but even more important: they’re different everywhere. Some regions are far ahead, while others, including much of the U.S., still lack clear direction. That uncertainty makes it hard for companies to act confidently.
And we’re hearing it from companies in the industry. At the Sustainable Packaging Summit, regulatory clarity was noted as the top concern for many participants. Companies want to act, but they’re afraid of making the wrong decision. And since many of these companies sell in multiple markets, they’re often juggling conflicting rules and expectations.
How are companies addressing this conflict? It depends on the industry and company size, but Mike made an interesting point. In the U.S., companies often base their decisions off of California’s regulations because they’re the strictest — and it seems that this is no longer a topic that only affects the United States. “For the first time, we are hearing from global brands that California is so different from all other markets that they're going to have a California strategy and all other solutions will be global.”
Recyclability is about more than material. It’s about whether that material is accepted and processed. That reality varies dramatically by region. In Belgium, the infrastructure is centralized and consistent. In the U.S., it’s fragmented by state and facility. Some countries even assign different EPR fees based on how easily a material can be recovered.
These factors play a huge role in global packaging decisions, especially for materials like polypropylene. That’s why a material’s success depends not just on the resin, but on educating partners about how it fits into real-world recovery systems.
While most people think of food packaging when they hear "form fill seal," the use cases are expanding fast. During this trip (and others throughout the years), the team has worked on several unexpected applications:
Each one of these applications brings its own challenges, but they all point back to the same need: a material that works across formats, runs efficiently on existing lines, and meets today’s (and tomorrow’s) expectations for sustainability.
What’s Next for Our Globe Trotters
This episode closes out 2025 for Crazy About Packaging, and it’s clear that the landscape is shifting fast. Companies are taking sustainability seriously, but many still need help connecting the dots between regulation, recyclability, and real-world execution.
If there’s one message the C.A.P. Pack wants to send to global packaging teams, it’s this: Don’t wait for perfect alignment. Start your conversations now.
XPP is already helping global brands replace polystyrene without compromise. And the most successful projects are the ones where teams are willing to collaborate early, bring everyone to the table, and stay open to learning.
From all of us at ICPG, thanks for listening throughout 2025. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or listen to past episodes on our website. We’ll see you in the new year with more packaging insights, more global stories, and maybe a few more surprising applications for XPP.