As the Institute of Packaging Professionals ushers in a new era of leadership, it continues to emphasize connection and education.
Conor Carlin became president of the member organization in August. He takes over from Jane Chase, who was executive director for nearly a decade. IOPP reaches packaging professionals across the value chain and also offers engagement opportunities for students. It’s supported by packaging suppliers and major brand owners such as Mars and PepsiCo.
Before Carlin became head of IOPP, he worked in and around the packaging industry for about two decades. This was largely in a commercial business development capacity, he said, with exposure to OEMs, converters, tooling companies and material suppliers. “I really got to see a lot of different types of plants, converting plants in packaging and plastics, in different parts of the world,” he said. During that time, he was an IOPP member firsthand, and also gained association experience when he recently served as president of the Society of Plastics Engineers.
Carlin credits Chase’s efforts leading IOPP through the challenging post-pandemic period. According to Carlin, there’s recently been a revitalization of some dormant IOPP chapters, as well as new ones coming to fruition. “A challenge for IOPP is to make sure that we can maintain that strong sense of community in an era when it's not as easy or frequent to get together as we used to,” he said.
Chase also worked to grow IOPP’s certification program, “as well as starting the pathway into e-learning through a big investment in a learning management system,” a transition from more traditional textbooks and PDFs, Carlin said. Digital transformation is a priority of IOPP’s board going forward.
IOPP’s role in the education ecosystem
Building on the foundation that Chase established, “I see a lot of opportunities to grow and expand that e-learning,” Carlin said.
This could be as a white label supplier to other groups. It could also be targeted to individuals who, due to budget or schedule constraints, cannot commit to multi-day in-person trainings. IOPP wants to ensure “that all of our good programming is available in a format that’s easiest for them to consume,” he said.
Asked about what role IOPP serves in this arena compared with other packaging organizations, Carlin said that IOPP can help fill knowledge gaps. IOPP currently has eight technical committees, including on topics such as sustainable packaging. It’s “volunteers giving their time to create technical content that helps [address] a need that employers see in their employees,” he said.
For example, the sustainable packaging technical committee built training modules, led by industry practitioners, covering the fundamentals of sustainable packaging. This could be useful to someone with a background in material science, but not in sustainability.
“You definitely get your university education, and then you definitely get on-the-job training,” Carlin said. “But IOPP is filling in some of those gaps in a very practical way.”
Similarly, IOPP can offer foundational training regulatory schemes like EPR, which “addresses a gap that a lot of companies have stated that they see,” he said.
In another example, a packaging company might hire an engineer that’s not necessarily a packaging engineer. “If they're mechanical or chemical or electrical, and they’re joining companies with packaging as part of the focus, they still need some of those foundational studies in packaging, and IOPP is perfectly placed for that,” he said.
Looking ahead
Carlin said he’s too new in the role at this point to weigh in on what the younger generation will demand from IOPP, and how AI is changing packaging careers. Regarding the latter, the board has identified AI as a strategic topic, Carlin said. “It’s up to us to maintain awareness and provide unbiased, objective educational content where we can,” he said. IOPP is “starting to dip our toe in that” via webinars, “and then we’ll see where it goes from there.”
The vision for IOPP is to be “an objective platform on which packaging professionals can interact and learn and connect with each other,” Carlin said.
IOPP’s foundational pillars of education and networking are “still relevant in a world of AI, in a world of EPR, in a world of PPWR,” he said. “So making that as dynamic and engaging as possible while leveraging new digital transformation as part of that — I would say that’s going to hold us in good stead.”
