On Wednesday, a workshop on improving packaging technology and design to enhance business competitiveness and efficiency was held in the southern province of Đồng Nai. — Photo vtv.vn

HÀ NỘI — The packaging industry will benefit from the growth of e-commerce, and the free trade agreements that Việt Nam has joined, said Nguyễn Đức Trung, deputy director of the Enterprise Development Agency, at a training workshop in the southern province of Đồng Nai last week.

This workshop was focused on improving packaging technology and design to enhance business competitiveness and efficiency.

The training session is an activity within the framework of the USAID Improving Private Sector Competitiveness (IPSC) project, funded by USAID. The Ministry of Planning and Investment's Enterprise Development Agency is the project owner.

It is designed to equip businesses with the latest information and knowledge on packaging technology and design, thereby supporting businesses to develop appropriate packaging strategies to help create added value for their products.

Trung said this was one of the fastest-growing industries, significantly when domestic demand is increasing.

The packaging industry grows at an average of over 10 per cent per year.

Currently, Việt Nam has more than 900 packaging factories, about 70 per cent of which are located in the southern provinces.

The Việt Nam Plastics Association reported that the plastic packaging industry had also developed strongly recently, with an average growth rate of more than 25 per cent per year.

Plastic packaging thrived due to the excellent growth of the food industry, said the association.

More than the purpose of packaging and protecting goods, today, packaging has become more of a "storyteller" for brands, playing a big role in businesses' marketing and communication campaigns.

A global packaging company MeadWestvaco Corporation study shows that up to 64 per cent of consumers decided to buy a product off the shelf without prior research.

Packaging is one of the important factors affecting the purchase decision, helping products catch the eye of the buyer at first sight.

Under the sharing of packaging design expert Trần Hữu Như Anh, Director of Light Packaging Company, the training session re-systematised the thinking and strategy of packaging development to meet business trends in the new era.

Vietnamese enterprises have invested in new technology lines and supplied the market with many types of high-class packaging, meeting strict standards of food safety and hygiene.

Although the country’s packaging industry is considered to have high growth potential, Trung said Vietnamese packaging enterprises seemed overwhelmed by competition with foreign enterprises.

If the situation did not change, it was very likely that Vietnamese enterprises would not only lose their domestic market share, but the value from the export market would also fall into the hands of foreign investors, Trung said.

Talking at the training session, Nguyễn Thị Bích Thủy, USAID senior programme manager, said that the IPSC project, with a total budget of US$36 million, had been currently the largest private-sector support programme of USAID to help businesses overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, improve capacity in governance and technology, financial access, innovation, market access and promote a favourable business investment environment.

Being implemented from 2020 to 2025, the project's support was expected to help Việt Nam's private sector improve operational efficiency, and strengthen its ability to respond, recover and adapt to increasing and constantly fluctuating demands of the domestic and international markets, said Thủy. — VNS