For two decades, brands moved flexible packaging production offshore to chase unit cost. The pendulum is swinging back, and flexo converters are seeing the demand impact.
What is driving it
Three things. First, freight costs and lead times made offshore packaging painful during the supply chain disruption of the early 2020s. Second, brands want shorter inventory cycles and more SKU agility. Third, the unit cost gap has narrowed as automation and energy costs offset wage differences.
What this means for converters
Demand is up. Lead time pressure is up. Job complexity is up — more SKUs, smaller runs, faster turnarounds. Plants that can handle the new mix are winning. Plants that cannot are losing share even with healthy demand.
The mounting room implication
Higher SKU counts mean more sleeves, more plates, and more changeovers. A mounting room sized for 2015 inventory cannot keep up with 2025 demand.
The fastest ROI projects we are seeing right now are storage and workflow upgrades that let plants handle more SKUs without adding people. The press capacity is there. The bottleneck is upstream.
The window
Reshoring is creating a 3–5 year window where plants that invest in throughput will take share from plants that don't. After that, the winners will be entrenched and the losers will be acquired.
The Flexopodz Team
Purpose-built mounting room solutions for flexographic printing.