Understanding the impact of de-stocking for packaging players

Across the packaging industry, companies have been facing significant volatility in volumes and prices driven by COVID-related disruptions and downstream effects. An unprecedented surge in packaging demand in 2020-21, inventory stock-ups across value chains coupled with the supply chain disruptions had a significant impact on the industry. Post 2021, we have witnessed a plateauing of demand as well as inventory de-stocking across the value chain which has resulted in a significant negative impact on the financials of packaging companies. Depending on the end-use industry and its nature of exposure to the retail value chain, this de-stocking cycle has played out differently.

Join McKinsey experts for a webinar to discuss our most recent research and findings on our market and de-stocking perspective for the packaging industry. We take a holistic view of the macro drivers for relevant end-markets for packaging to disaggregate impacts of short-term factors like de-stocking and longer-term factors (end market slowdown, substrate shifts) on the performance of packaging companies.

We will answer:

• How has de-stocking impacted packaging demand in different end-use industries and how has it impacted the packaging companies
• Where are we in the overall de-stocking cycle across industries? How is it likely to impact the performance of packaging companies in the near future?