Packaging India
Packaging India is the bimonthly journal of the Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP), headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is the house publication of India's apex packaging body — an autonomous institute working under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — and it carries technical articles, research contributions and industry news to packaging professionals, companies, institutes and associations in India and abroad. Where most trade magazines are commercial ventures, Packaging India is the journal of a national institute, and its pages reflect that institutional mission: raising packaging standards across the country.
The Indian Institute of Packaging
The IIP was established in May 1966 by the packaging and allied industries together with the Ministry of Commerce, and registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. Its stated objective is to improve packaging standards in India, originally with a strong emphasis on strengthening exports through better package design. The institute's motto, rendered in English as "Packaging for Better Living", summarises its outlook. Its headquarters and principal laboratories are in Mumbai, at Andheri East, and it operates through regional centres that over time have included Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and others, with a major new centre opened in Bengaluru in November 2025 on a four-acre site with laboratories for material testing, chemical analysis and transport testing.
A Journal with a Technical Brief
Packaging India is published six times a year, on an April-to-March annual subscription cycle. The institute describes the journal as consisting of technical articles together with news and updates from the Asian Packaging Federation and the World Packaging Organization — the two international bodies with which IIP is closely linked, and for which it serves as India's national representative. Issues are built around themes: one documented call for papers, for the April-May 2018 issue, took packaging machinery and automation as its subject and invited research papers and technical articles from professionals and academics across the packaging industry. Subscription charges listed by the institute have been Rs. 1,500 a year within India and the SAARC region, and US$150 for other countries, with single new issues priced individually.
An Open Door for Researchers
A distinctive feature of Packaging India is that it functions as a publishing platform for the wider packaging community, not only for the institute's own staff. The IIP periodically issues public calls inviting research papers and technical articles from industry professionals and researchers, with the stated aim of providing an international platform for the packaging industry and academia. For a sector in which much knowledge sits inside companies — in materials science, machinery, printing, converting and package testing — the journal offers a route for practitioners to publish innovations and developments and to promote techniques to a readership of peers, institutes and associations worldwide.
The Institute the Journal Speaks For
The journal's authority derives from the breadth of the institute behind it. IIP's activities span laboratory testing and quality evaluation of packaging materials and packages; consultancy and project work, including package design and market studies; training and education, from diploma and correspondence courses to executive development programmes; research and development; information services and publications; and national and international seminars and conferences. It organises the INDIAPACK and INDPACK packaging exhibitions and conducts the national awards for excellence in packaging — the INDIASTAR awards, instituted in 1972, and the PACMACHINE awards for packaging machinery, introduced in 1992. Packaging India reports into, and out of, this ecosystem: awards, exhibitions, research and training all feed its pages.
Milestones Reflected in Print
The institute's own recorded evolution gives the journal a long backdrop. Laboratory testing services began in 1967-68; IIP was actively involved in forming the Asian Packaging Federation in the same period; a first intensive training course followed in 1968-69 and the first Indian Packaging Directory in 1969-70. The first Asian Packaging Congress and the INDIASTAR competition arrived in 1971-72, alongside the first INDPACK exhibition and the opening of the Chennai regional centre; the Kolkata centre followed in 1973-74, when the head office moved to Andheri in Mumbai. A textbook on packaging laws and regulations appeared in 1978-79. Across these decades, publishing — directories, textbooks and the journal — was consistently one of the ways the institute codified and spread packaging knowledge.
Education and the Packaging Profession
IIP is also an educational institution, offering postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in packaging to several hundred students, and Packaging India belongs to the same knowledge mission. The packaging sector in India is large — institute officials have put direct and indirect employment at more than five million people — spanning food processing, pharmaceuticals, logistics, e-commerce and consumer goods. A bimonthly technical journal circulated to industry, institutes and associations worldwide is one of the few channels through which standards, test methods and design thinking move across that fragmented workforce, and it supports the institute's training work by keeping qualified professionals current.
Readership and Circulation
The institute states that Packaging India has a significant readership and is circulated to the packaging industry, institutes and associations worldwide. Its audience is professional and institutional: packaging technologists, materials and machinery companies, brand owners' packaging departments, researchers, students and the members of the Asian Packaging Federation and World Packaging Organization networks whose updates it carries. The journal's international circulation mirrors IIP's own standing as the Indian institute aligned with the world's leading packaging bodies.
The Bengaluru Centre and the Journal's Future Beat
The institute's continuing expansion supplies the journal with fresh subject matter. The Bengaluru centre opened in November 2025 was designed as a hub for testing, training, research and technology transfer, with laboratories for material testing, chemical analysis and transport testing, and planned work on AI-based testing, data analytics and smart-packaging demonstrations. Its food packaging line — with form-fill-seal machines, modified-atmosphere and vacuum packaging systems, shrink packaging and barcode printing tools — is intended for hands-on training and live demonstrations of modern packaging methods and quality control, serving the food processing, pharmaceutical, logistics, e-commerce and consumer goods sectors. The centre joined an existing network reported as including Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Visakhapatnam alongside the Mumbai headquarters. Developments of this kind — new facilities, new test capabilities, new industry services — are the staple news content of Packaging India, connecting the journal directly to the institute's working life.
Awards and Exhibitions in Its Pages
Two institute institutions recur in the journal's world. The INDIASTAR awards, established in 1972, honour innovative concepts and excellence in packaging design and technology and are described by the institute as India's premier packaging awards event; the PACMACHINE awards, added in 1992, recognise achievement in packaging machinery, particularly design and development that substitutes imports and promotes exports. Winners are traditionally celebrated alongside the institute's exhibitions, so Packaging India's readers encounter the awards not as abstractions but as part of the industry's annual calendar — another way the journal binds the profession together.
Place in Indian Trade Publishing
Packaging India occupies a rare position in Indian media: a trade journal published not to sell advertising space but as one instrument of a government-backed standards mission dating to 1966. Its bimonthly rhythm, themed technical issues, open calls for papers and federation news make it a working tool for the packaging profession rather than a promotional magazine. For anyone tracing how Indian packaging — its materials, machines, awards and training — has developed over six decades, the journal published from Mumbai by the Indian Institute of Packaging is one of the sector's own primary records.
