Looks like the future is wide-open for plastic caps and closures in the US the next four years!
The numbers don’t lie: the United States caps and closures market was almost $12.5 billion in 2019, and it’s expected to reach over $15 billion by 2025. For the numbers crunchers out there, that’s a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 4.2%.
There are a number of reasons for this growth in plastic caps and closures:
- Convenience food packaging is exploding (especially during the pandemic) as more and more consumers take-out from restaurants and grocery stores. All that “convenience” means more “to-go” packaging — which means more demand for plastic containers, and the caps and closures that go with them.
- Consumer demand for ever-easier, yet still secure, caps and closures. For example, many pharmaceutical companies, driven by this consumer demand, are moving to easier (but still secure) child-proof caps, like the innovative one-piece push-and-turn pill vial closure that requires only a quarter turn to take off or put back on. Older child-proof lids were often difficult to both open and close, requiring a “push-and-turn” functionality many adults found daunting, especially senior citizens.
- An accelerating trend away from metal caps and toward plastic caps. Bottled water demand keeps rising, and so does the demand for plastic caps to seal them. And the move away from large glass beverage containers, to smaller, more lightweight bottles, and their accompanying plastic caps, is also driving this trend.
- The move toward plastic corks and caps for wine. The US is far and away the largest consumer of wine in the world, with 15% of the global market, which is only expected to grow in the next few years. That means, increasingly, you will unscrew a plastic cap on your favorite vintage, and pull out a plastic cork.
There are a few flies in this ointment, however. The most dominant one is the green movement which generally eschews “throw-away” plastic containers, and the plastic caps that go with them, even with recycling. However, earth-friendly plastic bio-resins could help mollify government regulators, moving forward.
Key take-away: it might behoove you to get some more “closure” in your plastic injection molding business — plastic closure!