Coopetition, in which competitors collaborate to address shared challenges to benefit all parties, can serve as a rising tide that lifts all ships — including relationships between market players that don’t always see one another as partners.

The “Coopetition Key to Packaging Sustainability” presentation during 2020 Virtual Engineering Week features insights from leaders at Maracuja Solutions, OSC2, and Futamura Group — all of whom are involved in natural products and sustainable packaging (see video below).

They explain their experiences in sharing knowledge at the pre-competitive stage, and how this helped them solve complex packaging and sourcing challenges and improve profits while protecting their proprietary knowledge.

Examples include the presenters’ work involving a university, a packaging and design collaborative, and a sustainability-focused flexible films summit, which brought together 80 participants. These included stakeholders across the circular economy, including brands, packaging material firms, waste haulers, composters, policy and legislative affairs pros, and others.

One outcome is the establishment of several incubator projects now underway.