What Three Roundtables Changed on Packaging

On 15 April 2025, the UPCYCLE Plastics project closed its industry roundtable series in Spain, after earlier sessions in Belgium and Denmark. Organised by Eroski and AIMPLAS with the support of the Basque Food Cluster, this third gathering brought together industrial actors, researchers, distributors, and regional clusters around a shared question: how do we move from conversation to action on circular packaging?

Three things came through clearly across the series. Biobased solutions are advancing fast, but integrating them into existing supply chains remains a concrete operational challenge. Collaboration between industry and public research works best when it starts at the design stage, not at validation. And regional clusters are doing far more to accelerate deployment than they are typically given credit for.

What the series confirmed is something the transition has struggled with for years: a credible shift to circular packaging cannot be designed from above and handed down. It gets built at the level of the value chain, with the companies and organisations that actually produce, transform, and distribute.

At ECO Imagination, this is exactly the kind of work we support. Our role in the UPCYCLE project focuses on communication, dissemination, and stakeholder engagement across Europe, helping translate research outcomes into accessible formats and ensuring project results reach the people who can act on them.