UK packaging industry faces workforce “time bomb”

Peter MacQueen, Principal Lecturer in Apprenticeships at Sheffield Hallam University, home of the UK’s only dedicated packaging undergraduate degree apprenticeship course, has urged that more must be done by the UK packaging industry to address the growing workforce crisis.

With the high-profile challenge of fewer young professionals entering the UK packaging industry, Peter emphasises the need for more immediate action to secure the industry’s future.

Explaining, Peter said: “It’s no secret that the UK packaging industry has a major issue in attracting, developing and retaining its talent pipeline. We need to get serious about a solution. The UK packaging industry is world-leading in many aspects, but what happens five, ten years down the line when we don’t have the workforce to deliver on that, particularly in the more specialised technical skills? We fall behind, and that’s a timebomb we need to defuse, and fast.

“There are many reasons for this, but it all comes back to how we’re laying the foundation – education. It’s the cornerstone of progress in the packaging industry, but our options have been limited. In the US and Germany, there are very established programmes that arm the next generation of packaging professionals with sector-specific skills and competencies, but we have lagged behind in the UK. That’s what makes Sheffield Hallam’s Higher Degree Apprenticeship Packaging Professional BSc course so pivotal in addressing these challenges; there’s nothing else available like it in the UK.