PACK EXPO International fills McCormick Place in Chicago from October 18 to 21. It’s held every two years and is the largest packaging and processing show in the Western Hemisphere, with around 2,600 exhibitors and about 48,000 attendees expected.
Organized by PMMI, it covers packaging machinery, automation, materials and food and pharma processing. Visitors come from more than 40 industries, so the same hall serves a snack maker, a drug company and a cosmetics brand.
Automation, robotics and sustainable packaging lead the agenda. Labor shortages keep pushing manufacturers toward lines that need fewer people, and new packaging rules in the US and Europe are forcing changes to materials.
For anyone running a production line, PACK EXPO is where you see the machines you’ll be buying over the next five years.