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On a dull, autumnal day, the doors opened on London Packaging Week 2025 at the ExCeL London for its 15th anniversary edition, welcoming thousands from across the packaging, design, procurement, and brand community. Outside may have been grey, but everything sparkled with energy, colour, and creativity inside the halls.
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| London Packaging Week Opens at the ExCeL. |
Featuring packaging design for luxury and beauty to food, drink, and “fast-moving consumer goods” (FMCG), the event attracted over 200 exhibitors from across the world. Booths were spread across four zones: Packaging Première, Perfume, Cosmetics, & Design (PCD), Premium & Luxury Drinks (PLD), and Food & Consumer Packaging. Talks and educational tracks took place on three busy conference stages. Up to 5,000 visitors were expected to attend.
Walking the floor on the first day, the atmosphere felt upbeat and purposeful. As the organisers noted, London Packaging Week continues to “level up” each year, serving industries that sit at the intersection of luxury, sustainability, and design inspiration. This year, sustainability was especially embedded in everything from materials and production methods to how brands communicate their stories.
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Inside the Halls.
Source: Easyfairs. |
Premium Design Meets Practical Sustainability
Among the most striking examples of sustainability was Amberley Labels (part of the Faris Group), which showcased its award-winning Aureus Vita Fibonacci Dry Gin label that was recently named “Label of the Year” at the UK Packaging Awards. It’s a beautifully executed piece that uses hot foiling, embossing, debossing, UV detailing, and invisible ink for UK tax compliance—all printed on a textured digital substrate. The design, inspired by the Golden Ratio, captures how luxury and technical precision can coexist. “Brands still want embellishment,” one team member told me, “but they’re doing it smarter—minimal foil, compliant substrates, and more customization.”
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| Award-Winning Label Design for Gin (left). |
Another innovation came from All4Labels, which is rethinking traditional metallic foiling altogether. In collaboration with ACTEGA, the company launched its “The Flow” campaign at Labelexpo Europe in Barcelona to showcase STARSHINE: an on-demand sustainable metallization solution. The process applies adhesive directly to the object’s surface before blasting foil particles onto it, with the excess recovered and reused. The result is a premium metallic finish with minimal foil waste and no need for paper labels. Designed to reduce environmental impact while enhancing visual appeal, the system is said to cut CO₂ emissions by up to 80% compared with traditional metallic foiling methods.
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All4Labels’s No Paper Labels with Metallic Effects
(Courtesy of STARSHINE). |
Panels That Looked Ahead
The speaker programme ran alongside the show floor and drew strong crowds throughout the day. Microsoft’s Kevin Marshall, Senior Director of Design and Packaging, opened with a talk on inclusive design—noting how accessibility and usability are finally gaining prominence in packaging.
Another well-attended session entitled “Future-Proofing Brands with Smart Packaging” explored the rise of digitized packaging. Speakers from GS1 UK, Diageo, and Selinko described how quick response (QR) codes and unique digital identifiers are transforming brand storytelling and traceability. GS1’s Camilla Young spoke about the next generation of barcodes that can link verified data on ingredients, sourcing, and sustainability, while the upcoming regulatory Digital Product Passport is intended to follow a product for the whole life span from production to when it goes out into the world to when it ends up at a reuse or recycling centre. For Diageo, this technology could connect data, compliance, and customer engagement by offering a “message in a bottle” moment for brands seeking to interact directly with consumers.
In a later session, DEFRA and PackUK took on the practicalities of the circular economy. Emma Bourne OBE, Director of Circular Economy at DEFRA, outlined how the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) reforms will channel £1.5 billion in investment into recycling infrastructure across the UK over the next 10 years. The scheme is now live with PackUK having issued the first EPR invoices this week, with PackUK’s new CEO Jeremy Blake describing this as a “trigger point” for transformation, a moment when talk turns into tangible local authority funding to fund and boost the performance of the circular economy.
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| DEFRA and PackUK. |
Keypoint Intelligence Opinion
I was only able to attend the first day but, for me, if there was one defining feature of this year’s London Packaging Week, it was balance: between creativity and compliance as well as luxury and logic. Also noteworthy was the presence of a large contingent of Chinese exhibitors, which hints at a changing global landscape—one that brings new competition and fresh ideas in equal measure.
London Packaging Week was not just a showcase of shiny beautiful packaging; there was plenty of thought-provoking ideas with keynote talks bringing industry’s most forward-thinking minds together to reimagine how products look, feel, and function in a world where sustainability, inclusivity, and intelligence need to be part of the design brief itself.
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