Live from the show floor at TOKYO PACK 2026, Packaging Europe’s director Tim Sykes walks us through some of the innovations on display and reflects on the packaging landscape in Japan, from definitions of sustainability to legislative preparation.
For a visitor more familiar with the European packaging landscape, TOKYO PACK 2026 offered some instructive contrasts. Japan's packaging industry is highly technically innovative, and it serves consumers with exacting expectations of quality, convenience of use and visual appeal. As a result, user experience features more prominently in the latest developments than it typically does in Europe.
Experience is not always easy to deliver in conjunction with minimization of waste, and any casual browse of a Japanese konbini (convenience store) or depāto (department store) will reveal examples of delightful and user-friendly packaging that may look over-packaged to Western eyes.
However, sustainability is, as elsewhere, a major driver and often the most impressive innovation reflects the challenging brief of delivering both experience and improved environmental footprint.
It’s notable at the expo that many companies – including giants of Japanese packaging such as Toppan and Dai Nippon Printing – are devoting considerable development effort to PPWR-ready circularity, through design for recyclability and the use of recycled content. Nevertheless, there’s a noticeable difference in emphasis around what sustainability means.
In a country where most plastic waste is incinerated (or "thermally recycled") and shifting to a circular economy requires even more fundamental adaptations than in Europe, sustainability-driven innovation leans more heavily on carbon reduction and material reduction.
Here are some innovations that caught my eye – winners in this year’s Kinoshita Prize or Japan Packaging Contest (and sometimes in both), the elite competitions organized by the excellent Japan Packaging Institute.
Less material, lower carbon
Kao Corporation's Emal laundry detergent bottle uses a "smart rib" design, combining long vertical and short horizontal ribs, to retain compression, vacuum and grip strength while cutting resin use by around 23%. With recycled content added, lifecycle CO2 falls by about 19%.
Kikkoman Food's 1-litre "waist-fit" soy sauce bottle follows a similar logic: a pinched waist makes it easier to hold and pour, while weight drops from 29g to 26g – the lightest 1-litre soy sauce PET bottle in Japan, according to the company.
Toyo Seikan's EcoEnd, developed with aluminium producer UACJ, is a beverage can end that substantially raises recycled content at the same gauge and performance, with no change to seaming tools, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by around 40%. At TOKYO PACK, the company also showed its Compression Bottom Reform (CBR) technology, which reshapes the can base after forming so it can be thinned without losing pressure resistance.
Nisshin OilliO Group and Kewpie addressed a long-standing gap in Japan's PET recycling: cooking oil and dressing bottles have typically been sent for energy recovery because of concerns about oil residue. After trials on production equipment, the two companies became the first in Japan to use bottle-to-bottle recycled PET made from oil-contaminated bottles.
A collaboration between Fuji Machinery, Fuji Pack System, Marking System Technology, Konica Minolta and DAC Engineering builds a water-based inkjet printer and dryer into a packaging machine. Printing directly onto common unprinted film, at up to 80 packs a minute, eliminates the waste of obsolete pre-printed film when products change.
Japan Pulp and Paper's Kami Eco Craft+α, winner of the contest's top Japan Star award, is a paper durable and water-resistant enough to withstand washing. Sewable, printable and free of synthetic fibres, it is designed for repeated use.
Nisshin Seifun Welna's microwaveable fresh pasta pouch, developed with Toppan, uses a transparent vapour-deposited barrier film to keep the product shelf-stable at ambient temperature. Two minutes in the microwave, with no pot or water, delivers the chewy texture associated with fresh pasta.
Designing for experience
Several winners showed how far Japanese brands go in designing for the experience of use and for accessibility. KOSÉ Corporation developed the packaging for its INFINITY The Repair cream after interviewing people living with the after-effects of stroke. A non-slip elastomer resin on the jar base allows it to be opened one-handed, the carton opens fully so the jar can be removed from the side, and type size and colour were optimized for legibility.
Toyo Glass' jar for Aohata 55 jam has a faceted, diamond-cut shoulder that makes it easier for children and people with weaker hands to grip and open, plus braille identifying the product. Kao's Biore Kids Stamp UV sunscreen has a multi-nozzle cap that dispenses a paw-print shape, making application fun for children while metering an appropriate dose.
Shirohato Foods and The Pack Corporation created an all-paper drink-and-food pack for Expo 2025 Osaka: a pentagonal food tray sits on the drink cup, leaving a gap for a paper straw, so visitors could eat and drink one-handed. And POLA's B.A skincare packaging was shaped through repeated drawing and sculpting into irregular curves whose appearance shifts with light and angle – packaging conceived as a sensory experience in its own right.
