Mintel’s reboot: It's alright Ma, I'm only rethinking

Mintel's global new products database tracks over 45,000 product launches each month across 86 markets. Among these, a small group stands out for rethinking their approach to packaging. They explore what packaging could become if some of its underlying assumptions were reconsidered, presenting a fresh perspective to its role, function and value.

Assumption One: Packaging must exist

The single-serve coffee capsule is a masterpiece of convenience and an environmental disaster both rolled into one product. Billions sold, billions destined for landfills or complex recycling streams. Most companies that tackle this problem redesign the capsule with better materials, cleaner recycling and incremental improvement. Café Royal asked a different question: What if the capsule just… didn't exist? Coffeeb is a compressed coffee ball coated in a thin, plant-based membrane, composted after use, zero aluminium or plastic. The product is the package. What was once a problem becomes invisible.

This demonstrates that sometimes the most radical innovation isn't a better version of the thing, it is the courage to delete the thing entirely. Which raises a harder question: What else are we packaging out of habit?

Assumption Two: It holds its shape

Evian's (Re)new is a collapsible 5L water "bubble" made from 100% recycled PET. It uses 60% less plastic than equivalent volumes in standard bottles. But the real innovation isn't the material reduction. It is the decision to let the packaging change form during use. As water is dispensed, the bubble progressively collapses, shrinking its own footprint in the consumer's home. Most packaging occupies the same space whether full or empty, eventually becoming an awkward waste object that triggers guilt. Evian's bubble is responsive, it knows how to get out of the way.

How much consumer frustration with packaging is actually frustration with empty packaging? With the bottle that's too big for the bin or the box that clutters the counter? The opportunity for packaging designers and technologists is clear: design for the packaging's afterlife, not just its shelf life.

Assumption Three: Making a package and filling it are two steps

Shiseido's Ipsa brand reimagined how the package comes into being using Amcor's LiquiForm technology which simultaneously forms the container and fills it with product in a single manufacturing step. The result: 56% less plastic and 48% fewer greenhouse gas emissions. LiquiForm doesn't ask consumers to refill, return, or recycle. It embeds sustainability into the production infrastructure itself.

The consumer receives a beautifully sculpted, minimal bottle (winner of the Japan Packaging Award) blissfully unaware of the revolution that created it. The most scalable sustainability wins may be the ones consumers never see.

Assumption Four: Delight needs plastic

Children's chocolate surprises, toys inside and plastic everywhere– this has been an industry compromise for decades. Playin Choc solved it with home-compostable chocolate wrapping: a 3D puzzle toy made from recycled board, educational cards, and certified plastic free status across the entire system. Fun, collectability and surprise aren't inextricably linked to plastic. Playin Choc built a thriving collection-based repeat purchase model: endangered animals, woodland animals, dinosaurs.

We often assume plastic is the only way to deliver certain experiences, when in reality many of these are not real constraints but gaps in how we're thinking about alternatives.

Assumption Five: Packaging and product are separate decisions

Skincare packaging is usually designed around repeated use: open, apply, close, repeat. Which means formulations need to withstand exposure to air, light and touch over time. The packaging and usage behaviour sets the limits of the chemistry. Noble Panacea starts at a different point. Its patented Organic Super Molecular Vessel (OSMV) technology encapsulates active ingredients at a molecular level, protecting them from degradation and controlling how they are released into the skin.

Stability is built into the formulation itself, not added later through preservatives or outer protection. Then the single-dose packaging follows from this logic to ensure there are no issues with exposure from open containers. The packaging aligns with the formulation rather than compensating for it. This packaging is not just solving for stability but working alongside the formulation to control how the product is delivered and experienced. The key takeaway here is to design packaging and formulation as a single system, where advances in one can unlock new possibilities in the other.

Why this matters

Each of the five examples expands what packaging is capable of once its underlying assumptions are challenged.