This article first appeared in the February 2025 issue of ProPack.pro, authored by Hybrid Software Australasia sales manager Brenton King

One of the biggest highlights of 2024 was drupa, as it enabled the industry to showcase the latest innovations and get together to pool ideas and collaborate. The challenge was adapting to the changing market, reminding us we need to be flexible with industry demands and understand that we need new ways to interact with our customers/partners and prospects.

In addition, attracting talent into our industry continues to be a challenge. For the past few years, we have seen a decline in new employees coming into the industry. Finding and retaining the right people to keep business going, throughout my travels and discussions with international colleagues, seems to be not just a local problem but a worldwide one for the industry at large.

Just like last year, consolidation will be rife in 2025 – this is set to continue as many smaller companies get enveloped into larger industry players.

In 2024, we saw the likes of Smirnoff- Westrock and Amcor and Berry merging, and we have already seen the news of SGS Co purchase SGK this year. This won’t be the last major transition in 2025.

In terms of external forces, we have seen the economic and political environment reduce in volatility slightly, although they will still pose challenges in 2025 – but I’m looking forward to a more subdued year.

On the upside, we have noticed many more businesses adopting the Cloud as a hosting option. Hybrid Software has always been flexible with hosting platforms for our CLOUDFLOW product but giving the option for a fully hosted SaaS offering via our MYCLOUDFLOW platform has been a worldwide success in reducing the local IT demands and challenges our customers face.

It also enables a centralised and consolidated platform for multi-site operations, which is a significant positive for our customers in reducing overheads and costs in their business.

In 2025, there are some areas of growth that businesses should be looking to, to navigate through challenges:

1. Customisation and the use of different substrates and packaging options is key
2. The increase in digital solutions goes hand-in-hand with the ability to adopt customised, individual products for the personalisation of small-run or marketing campaigns, which can influence the way consumers behave
3. We see a lot of innovative materials on the market, which means brands can adopt different packaging options, allowing for an increase in flexible packaging solutions.

In terms of technologies of 2025, being a software supplier, AI is a big topic – although AI can be a marketing tool for some companies, the technology is advancing rapidly.

As a software company that strives to find solutions for customers, we have had situations whereby we haven’t been able to tackle complex problems, but a few months later, with AI assistance, we have a solution available which is a complete change in the way we approach the market.

Hybrid Software has also used AI tools to optimise our code for faster run times, better efficiency, and reduced energy usage for all our customers. A simple example we found is, computing 100 divided by two is significantly more intensive on a computer than 100 multiplied by 0.5.

By striving to make our software as efficient as possible, we are committing to improving our sustainability – even though a software company does have the same recycling and waste management issues that other suppliers have, there is a commitment to do our part.

This year, Hybrid Software’s main priority is to further invest in innovation. Hybrid is dedicated to listening to the demands of our customers and bringing forward the most innovative solutions to the market, and the only way we can do that is via R&D investment and solutions engineers to bring those innovations to final products. I have already seen the roadmap for some of our products to

be released at Labelexpo Europe 2025. I would love to say everything will be great and we will face a fantastic 2025. However, there will be challenges, but challenges bring out the best in people, so I am looking forward to 2025 being a successful year for many companies. I hope everyone else is looking forward to this as well.