How Corrugated is Adapting to E-Commerce Evolution

During a presentation at the Corrugated Conference at the 2026 FESPA Global Print Expo in Barcelona, Spain, Christian Vionnet, product marketing director at Bobst, discussed the changing dynamics of the corrugated packaging space. He proposed that the real issue at hand is not whether the so-called “e-commerce bubble” will burst, but how converters are able to adapt to greater volatility and complexity in the market.

About the current moment, Vionnet said, “It’s not a crisis. It’s simply an opportunity to transform how we build our corrugated products.” 

Vionnet linked corrugated demand to broader economic and consumer confidence trends. Historically, he explained, fluctuations in global confidence have been tied to events such as the Cold War, 9/11, and the 2008 financial crisis. He called 2019 the “last normal year” before the disruptions of the COVID pandemic permanently altered consumption patterns. During that period, e-commerce growth accelerated dramatically, driving both converters and manufacturers to invest heavily in capacity and fulfillment. But as demand normalized, the industry was left with excess capacity and increasingly unpredictable order patterns.

Vionnet shared that corrugated growth is still expected to continue, but that future demand will be “less predictable, and that changes everything.” That unpredictability has increased operational complexity across the industry. Converters today must address shorter runs, more changeovers, higher SKU counts, and increased customization requirements driven by expectations around e-commerce branding and packaging. At the same time, he said, sustainability pressures and cost constraints are driving converters to make boxes both lighter and simpler. 

Converters are facing intense cost pressure, Vionnet said, due mainly to rising raw material costs, labor shortages, higher energy costs, and operational expenses. Customers are unwilling to absorb significantly higher packaging prices, so converters must improve internal efficiencies. To address this, converters must focus on maximizing productivity and optimization. 

He asserted that the industry is evolving into two distinct realities: large integrated groups are leveraging scale and optimization; and, smaller and mid-sized converters require flexibility, quick ROIs, and careful investments. Competitiveness, he explained, is “no longer about the size of a company. It’s about the right level of industry integration.”

He outlined four “rules” he believes will define future competitiveness: 

• Integration — Productivity is no longer about machine speed alone, but about integrating multiple processes into fewer production steps. Examples include inline systems that reduce handling and improve throughput. 
• Agility — With volatile demand and smaller orders, quick job changeovers become critical. Both automation and synchronized setups enable converters to change jobs quickly and maintain efficiency. 
• Automation — Labor shortages make automation essential, particularly for eliminating repetitive, low-value tasks. Interventions like automated material handling and robotics can improve consistency, ergonomics, and uptime. 
• Precision and Quality — Tight tolerances and sustainability demands require proactive quality systems. Tools such as advanced registration controls and inline inspection can help prevent waste and reduce returns. 

Vionnet stressed that packaging is evolving from a simple cost item into a strategic asset intended to deliver branding, logistics optimization, sustainability, and reuse value. He said that in today’s packaging space, “value is not created by producing more. It’s created by producing smarter, lighter, and more consistent.”

The future of corrugated packaging will depend not on market volume alone, he said, but on how intelligently manufacturers operate in a quickly changing marketplace.