The food and beverage sector is often the first place where a packaging crunch becomes visible. Drinks need bottles, cans, caps and labels. Food needs trays, films, pouches, cartons and closures.
When packaging supply tightens, factories can keep making products but still struggle to get them to market in the right format, at the right speed and at the right cost.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
That is what makes the current disruption so serious for business buyers. The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. In 2024, oil flows through the strait averaged about 20 million barrels a day, and around one-fifth of global LNG trade also passed through it.
That matters to food and drink packaging because plastics depend on petrochemical feedstocks linked to oil and gas, while glass and metal packaging are energy-intensive to produce.
Trade coverage now shows the pressure spreading through food and drink supply chains. FoodNavigator reported in March that tensions around the Strait of Hormuz were driving plastic packaging prices higher for food and drink producers.
Economic Times reported today that shortages and higher costs in glass, PET and other plastics were hitting packaged goods companies and forcing some to cut stock levels or reduce pack sizes.
Why food and drink are especially exposed
Food and beverage companies buy packaging in huge volumes and across many material types. A bottled water producer may depend on PET preforms, caps, labels and shrink film.
A dairy business may need plastic tubs, lidding film and corrugated outers. A sauces or beer producer may depend more on glass or metal. This broad material exposure means a packaging crunch can affect several parts of the same product line at once.
Plastics are especially exposed because they start with petrochemical feedstocks. The American Chemistry Council notes that natural gas liquids and naphtha are core feedstocks for the chemistry that underpins plastics production.
When oil and gas flows tighten, resin prices can move quickly. ICIS reported in March that Asia’s polypropylene market was facing severe supply disruption because of the Middle East conflict, while another report from ICIS warned that secondary impacts could reshape recycled polymer markets in Europe.
Food and drink buyers are not exposed through plastics alone. Aluminium production is highly energy-intensive, with electricity making up a large share of the energy consumed.
Glass is also an energy-intensive material, and the European container glass industry has spent years focusing on energy reduction because energy costs are central to competitiveness. When energy prices rise, both substrates become harder to source at stable prices.
Where the pressure shows up in daily operations
The first impact is cost. Higher resin, glass and metal prices push up the cost of primary packaging, while fuel and freight costs lift the total landed cost. Packagingsouthasia reported this week that FMCG, liquor and beer brands were already seeing a sharp rise in packaging costs as the West Asia conflict squeezed supplies.
Food and Drink Federation warnings reported by the Guardian point in the same direction: energy, transport and packaging costs are all feeding into higher food inflation risk in the UK.
The second impact is availability. A packaging crunch is not always a full shortage. More often, buyers face slower deliveries, irregular allocations and less choice in pack formats.
Economic Times reported that the conflict was restricting supplies of glass, PET and plastics used in a wide range of packaged goods. Food and drink businesses can sometimes reformulate products faster than they can redesign packaging, so a delay in bottles, jars or films can quickly disrupt production planning.
The third impact is margin pressure. Food and beverage companies operate with tight margins and high volumes. They cannot always pass higher packaging costs through to retailers or consumers straight away.
That is why a packaging crunch can turn into a profitability problem even before it becomes a shelf-availability problem. The Food and Drink Federation’s warning that UK food inflation could rise sharply this year underlines how quickly packaging, energy and logistics costs can move into the wider food economy.
What B2B buyers should do next
The most useful response is to treat packaging as a strategic supply issue rather than a routine purchasing line. Buyers need a clear view of which products rely on oil-linked plastics, which depend on energy-intensive glass or aluminium, and which suppliers are most exposed to long shipping routes. This matters because the current disruption is affecting both material cost and transport reliability at the same time.
Procurement teams should also review how much flexibility they really have. Dual sourcing, regional supply, pack simplification and selective use of recycled content can all help reduce exposure.
ICIS has pointed to possible knock-on effects in recycled polymers, which means buyers need to track recycled and virgin markets together rather than assume one will remain insulated from the other.
For some food and drink categories, the best defence may be simpler pack formats and stronger safety stock on critical components such as closures, liners or preforms.
The longer-term lesson is straightforward. Food and beverage packaging supply chains are efficient when energy is stable, freight flows normally and raw materials are easy to source. They become fragile when any of those conditions break down.
The current packaging crunch has exposed that weakness clearly.
Businesses that map their material exposure, shorten supply lines where possible and build more realistic contingency plans will be better placed not only for this disruption, but for the next one as well.
