The responsiveness to the requirements of the new paradigm is essential to face the health crisis in the packaging sector

One of the actions proposed by the Packaging Cluster to deal with the health crisis caused by the coronavirus is the creation of a meeting space, the “Packaging Brunch“, where several managers of companies members of the cluster are the protagonists of the session. In these meetings, the participants will could share, in petit comité, the feelings generated by the current situation and the latent concerns in the sector, in addition to finding solutions all together as a cluster organization.

The first Packaging Brunch was released on the 3rd of April with the support of Albert Riba as moderator of the brunch. Riba, who regularly collaborates with the cluster, is a writer and columnist for Expansión and founder of Sapiens Mindset. As a professional, Albert Riba knows first-hand the uncertainty that plagues the business world regarding to take urgent decisions, to pay your employees or to get your product into the hands of the consumer.

As we mentioned, these kind of activities are created with the aim of supporting the member in managing the business and emotional impact of the current context and generating a community at the same time, a community that collaborates with each other. And is that the packaging sector faces many problems.

On the one hand, the pandemic has forced entrepreneurs to have to take decisions very quickly and that response agility is crucial to adapt to the requirements of the new paradigm, since, although the ideal is to have a prevention program for cases extremes, no one could have predicted the magnitude of the circumstances or the market response. In addition, the Government has established a series of economic measures that affect SMEs and large companies that, regardless of their scope of action, have a major impact on the food sector, as a staple product. That is why, the activity focuses on very specific products that, although their demand has increased, does not compensate with the rest of the sectors that are affected such as the automotive or construction, among others.

Many things have changed. The way we communicate with each other has changed, both with the team and with external collaborators. Now it is all virtual, online, and spaces that have been private until now have been professionalized. Business activity has also increased in those manufactures that remain active, as an industry of basic necessities, which affects the personal life of people and their balance between work and family.

At the economic level, the lack of liquidity is a subject that worries the companies, although at the moment there are public and private alternatives announced through the Institut Català de Finances or the Instituto de Crédito Oficial Estatal, which are expected to reach the business tissue.

These questions and some others may be discussed in the new meeting space created by the cluster. The next Packaging Brunch organize will take place on Wednesday 18th of April, next to the Beauty Cluster Barcelona, where companies from interrelated sectors will meet to learn new techniques to solve common problems.