New research from Smithers targets one of the fastest expanding niches in the packaging market – legalized cannabis. Its new report, The Future of Cannabis Packaging to 2024 tracks the development of this emerging industry and the transition to a legitimate medicinal and recreational product, and the challenges with supply and designing packaging to engage consumers.
The study is backed by a robust dataset tracking current and future value of cannabis packaging by sales channel, packaging format, and national market. Smithers’ analysis identifies the following top points:
· Total sales of legal cannabis worldwide will rise from $21 billion in 2019 to reach $55 billion in 2024
· The total value of cannabis packaging will be $493 million in 2019
· Year-on-year growth of 24% will drive this value to $1.63 billion in 2024
· The US is the leading market for cannabis packaging. It is 63% of the world demand in 2019
· The highest demand is in states that have legalized recreational use – the top three US states in 2019 are California, Washington, and Colorado
· Rigid plastic – often flip top containers – is the most popular cannabis packaging format, but double-digit growth is forecast for all major packaging substrates
· Legalization is opening opportunities for packaging technology suppliers to sell, child resistant closures, stay-fresh features and branded packaging features
· Small cannabis producers that use hand packaging and labelling are demanding automation in packaging as they look to build scale
· Black market sellers are already copying the branded packaging of emergent legal cannabis brands. In response these are investing in anti-counterfeiting and track-and-trace technologies for seed-to-sale transparency.
The Future of Cannabis Packaging to 2024 is available for purchase now; providing essential insight and comprehensive data forecasts for the current and future cannabis packaging market.
Packaging World and Healthcare Packaging provide extensive coverage of the cannabis industry, both for medical and recreational (adult use) markets.
![“Another key [UDI] benefit, because we're calling that product by the same name across the healthcare supply chain… rich and robust data that we can access around supply consumption and utilization rates. One of the buzz terms we've heard during the COVID-19 crisis was what's my burn rate? How fast am I going through gowns, masks, gloves?” – Mike Schiller, Senior Director at AHRMM](https://img.healthcarepackaging.com/files/base/pmmi/all/image/2020/08/UDI.5f4d326e41d53.png?auto=format&fit=crop&h=146&w=340)
