Trade Deals and Sustainability

We’ve started a Tread Global video podcast series which will deal with compliant child-resistant packaging. We’ll be talking weekly covering the topics of Sustainability, Child-resistant design and testing, elderly access to packaging, and regulations and policy. On Friday I was talking with Tim Hanley, who is our resident expert on child-resistant packaging dealing with Manufacturing and Logistics.

From the headlines last week, China and the US signed Phase 1 of the trade deal, putting an end to the 18-month long trade war. And also of importance was the signing of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Tim and I were discussing these two agreements and how this affects our business. At least we now have a clear view of what the future looks like in terms of manufacturing, tariffs (kind of) and shipping costs, which helps us in our long-term planning with our customers for their CR packaging solutions.  

Although we are clearER, it still is a bit conflicted. There are two sides to this deal that affect what we do here at Tread Global. On one side the cost and ease of doing business internationally will certainly help our customers in their expanding businesses, but on the other side, the increased production and trade in tars sands oil and fracked gas across the US, Canada and Mexico, will allow companies to challenge environmental regulations and protections. So from a sustainability aspect (which is one of our packaging focuses) this deal is not the best. 

We will see how this all plays out and we will certainly keep you up to date on how this affects things going forward.

Secondly, I asked Tim about Chinese New Year. He was saying that manufacturing has stopped in SE Asia for the next two weeks. Some of our customers expressed concern over this while I was at the Lift & Co. expo in Vancouver. What does this mean for our customers? 

Even though production has halted, every year this is a great time for us to do strategic planning. Throughout the month of January we’ll be meeting with our customers for planning sessions and taking pre-orders on our CR products. I asked Tim if he sees any issues with handling the upcoming manufacturing in 2020 after production resumes after CNY and his response was in Q3/4 of 2019 Tread really beefed up production capabilities to accommodate the increased Canadian cannabis expansion. Which from my standpoint is good to hear because much of our work is helping the large LPs plan for expansion in Canada.

January / February are great months for planning, and I encourage any of you who are wanting to get your cannabis product on the shelves to talk to us to get in the queue for CR packaging after CNY. We are actively taking orders now.

Also, in the sustainable packaging news we saw that Nestle will spend $2 Billion to develop sustainable recycled plastic packaging. The move is meant to transition from virgin plastics to food-grade recycled plastics and to accelerate the development of innovative sustainable packaging solutions. Also, a sustainable packaging concept for toothpaste which does away with the box, which you can see by clicking here. We’ll be watching these developments closely.

Reach out to either of us on LinkedIn and let’s continue the conversation. We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can find me here, or Tim at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/tim-hanley-59163911/

Have a great week.

Ben