Tocco Report: REUSABLE PACKAGING 2030 Special Edition

Winners, Losers, And The Real Economics Of Packaging In Loops

Reuse was once pitched as packaging’s great escape hatch: cups with QR codes, smart crates with GPS, refill stations dressed like tech launches. Between 2018 and 2022, the narrative briefly suggested a straight-line end to single-use. But 2025 has exposed the harder truth. Many early operators have bowed out or retreated into controlled environments where behaviour is predictable and losses are low. The sector hasn’t collapsed; it has sobered up.

What’s emerging now is a more realistic industry, one defined less by slogans and more by logistics. Return rates, wash costs, material fatigue, and regulatory deadlines are overtaking the rhetoric that once filled pitch decks. The winners are no longer those with the slickest apps but those who can run dependable loops, price risk accurately, and prove that every container actually comes back.

This report by the Tocco team examines that transition, mapping the models built to scale and the ones already hitting structural limits.