Data powerhouse McKinsey just published one of the most thorough diagnoses of the packaging and paper industry in years. It’s an industry health-check worth reading, but there’s a gap in the prescription.
The report, released in April 2026, is blunt about where the industry stands. Volumes flat or declining since 2022, and EBITDA margins under pressure across paper, rigid plastics, and glass. The packaging sector has underperformed the S&P 500 every year since 2021, and several sponsor-backed businesses are now in workout situations or approaching prepackaged bankruptcy.
The difference is that for over a decade in the packaging sector, demand did all the heavy lifting. Think rising e-commerce, SKU proliferation, and premiumisation across consumer categories. Packaging companies didn’t have to be especially sharp commercially, because the market kept growing and that growth covered a lot of inefficiency. That era is over.
McKinsey’s prescribed remedy focuses on four things: commercial excellence, cost reduction, talent, and targeted AI deployment. All reasonable, but there’s something conspicuously absent from that list. It’s the thing that separates the businesses that customers call first from the ones they call when their first choice is busy. That thing is positioning.
The invisible problem in the data
McKinsey notes that top-performing companies achieved organic growth of more than 200 basis points above market through targeted interventions in commercial excellence alone. That’s a significant number but dig into what ‘commercial excellence’ actually means in practice, and you’ll find it’s heavily weighted toward pricing discipline, key account management, and margin enforcement.
These are important of course, but they’re also the last few metres of a much longer race.
Before pricing conversations happen, before key accounts are managed, and before any margin is negotiated, the customer has already decided who they’re talking to. That decision is made far upstream, shaped by awareness, reputation, perceived expertise, and trust. In a flat or declining market, where CPG (consumer packaged goods) customers are under their own pressure and private-label growth is reshaping demand economics, packaging suppliers are competing harder for the same narrow pool of accounts. That’s a positioning problem, but most packaging businesses don’t treat it like one.
What an industry reset actually looks like from the outside
We work with businesses across the full gamut of the print, packaging, and labels sector. The pattern we see repeated is this: when volumes dip and budgets tighten, marketing spend is one of the first things cut. Something to revisit when conditions improve. The logic feels sound; cut the nice-to-haves, protect the operations, and ride it out.
Here’s why that logic fails, though. The companies that come out of a flat-demand period strongest aren’t the ones that cut fastest, but the ones that stayed visible while everyone else went quiet. When conditions improve, and McKinsey expects even modest recovery over the next one to two years, the businesses that maintained their presence and built market authority during the lean period have a head start that’s very difficult to close.
Procurement teams at CPG companies don’t wait for recovery before building their supplier shortlists. Those lists are being formed now, based on who they’re hearing from, who’s making noise in trade media, who’s producing useful content, and who’s visibly engaged with the regulatory questions they’re wrestling with.
The regulatory angle is a genuine opportunity
McKinsey flags incoming regulations, PPWR, EPR, and recycled content mandates, as a pressure point. It is. But it’s also one of the most significant commercial positioning opportunities the sector has seen in years.
The EU’s PPWR provisions become mandatory later in 2026, while the UK’s RAM-based EPR fee modulation is already translating recyclability ratings into real cost differences for producers. Brand owners and CPG companies are under compliance pressure they don’t fully understand yet, and they are actively looking for suppliers who can help them make sense of it.
Packaging businesses that can articulate how their solutions address a brand owner’s recyclability requirements, or how their substrate choices affect a customer’s EPR fee liability, are not just being helpful. They’re repositioning themselves from commodity supplier to strategic partner, and that’s a different commercial conversation entirely.
But very few companies are communicating this well. The expertise exists, but the communications strategy to surface it often doesn’t. That’s where partnering with a team like Think B2B Marketing comes into its own. Our team of experienced marketers, copywriters, strategists and analysts can help bring your message into the spotlight, right when it’s most important.
Private label growth is changing who you need to talk to
McKinsey’s consumer data points towards another important change. More than 80% of US and European consumers now rate private-label quality as equal to, or better than, branded products. Private-label volumes are growing while large incumbent CPG brands struggle to maintain momentum.
The report frames this as a challenge: lower average selling prices, higher SKU complexity, a more fragmented customer base. All true, but it also means the buyer population for packaging is shifting. The procurement contacts, the decision-making structures, the communication preferences of a fast-growing private-label operation are different from those of a top 30 CPG giant.
Packaging companies whose marketing was built around relationships with a small number of large accounts are going to find that model under strain. Reaching a broader, faster-moving customer base requires a different approach: stronger digital presence, sharper content strategy, more active engagement across trade media and LinkedIn, and a value proposition that doesn’t rely on a legacy relationship to carry it.
What ‘good’ looks like right now
We’re not suggesting packaging businesses spend their way out of a difficult market. The cost discipline McKinsey recommends is real, and it is necessary.
What we are saying is that the ROI on well-targeted B2B marketing in a constrained market is higher, not lower, than in a growing one. When the pool of available business is smaller and competition for it is sharper, being clearly positioned and consistently visible matters more. Every qualified lead that comes to you, rather than requiring an expensive outbound sales effort, improves the commercial picture.
The businesses doing this well share a few characteristics.
- They have a clear, specific point of view on where the market is going.
- They publish content their customers actually find useful, not product announcements dressed up as insight.
- Their spokespeople are visible in trade media, engaged in the regulatory conversation, and quoted in the publications their customers read.
- They treat marketing as a commercial function, not a support function. That’s the key shift.
One question worth asking
McKinsey’s report ends with a call to action for packaging CEOs and boards: act decisively, reshape portfolios, strengthen fundamentals, build the capabilities required to compete in a lower-growth, higher-volatility world.
Good advice, but here’s the question it leaves unanswered. When two companies with similar operational fundamentals compete for the same account, which one wins? The one the customer already knows, trusts, and understands.
Building that position is not an ops decision, and in a market where demand is no longer bailing anyone out, it’s not optional either.
Want to talk through what ‘better’ looks like for your business? Get in touch with the Think B2B Marketing team.
