The role of co-packing in the European packaging industry has fundamentally shifted. Ton Knipscheer, representing the European Co-Packers Association (ECPA), explains at interpack 2026 what this strategic shift means for brand owners and retailers.

Market dynamics push brands toward co-packing

The drivers behind the growth of the co-packing market are clear. “Time-to-market keeps shrinking, the number of SKUs doubles every two years, and legislation is getting more complex,” Knipscheer explains. Those forces overwhelm many brand owners whose core competence is not production agility.

A striking example is the lifestyle brand Rituals: “They are a brand marketing organization with a strong brand. Everything between brand conception and retail is done by contract packers and contract manufacturers,” Knipscheer says. The model lets companies concentrate on what they’re actually good at — building the brand — while specialists handle the execution.

Flexibility beats raw speed

The ECPA, founded in 2009, now brings together around 100 members across Europe. “Our members have machines that don’t run at 1,000 units a minute, but can be changed over in five minutes,” Knipscheer emphasizes. As product variety rises and batch sizes shrink, that flexibility becomes more valuable than sheer throughput.

The industry is also responding to sustainability requirements. ECPA members increasingly offer value-added services, from in-house packaging development to dedicated R&D centres for custom machine solutions — turning the traditional co-packer into a strategic partner rather than a pure execution vendor.

Long-term partnerships, not procurement contests

Knipscheer’s advice to brand owners choosing a co-packing partner is unambiguous: “Build long-term relationships. If all you want to do is compare prices, you’ll never build a relationship and you’ll never succeed.” The shift to co-packing only works if both sides treat it as a real partnership.

The ECPA is deliberately expanding into previously hard-to-reach markets such as France and Spain, and supports its members through lead generation without commission models — a clear signal of the growth potential of the European co-packing market, and of how seriously the association takes its role as both market builder and gatekeeper of quality.