Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Paula Feldman, Director of Business Intelligence with PMMI, and I'd like to welcome you to today's webinar. Today, we're going to hear from David, Billy, and Andrew Jaresti, and I know I just said that wrong, Andrew. I apologize. Research consultants with DeNovo. David and Andrew will be covering the findings of PMMI's 2018 Snack Foods Packaging and Processing Market Assessment Report. David, Billy has more than 10 years of experience in the consulting industry. He joined DeNovo in 2014 and has been successfully managing consulting projects at DeNovo, such as marketing analysis and assessments, voice of customers, and lease generations for more than four years in various end markets. To include packaging, consumer industry plastics, compounders, polymers, pulp and paper coating, and heases, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, and I'm sure many, many more. Andrew joined the DeNovo team in 2017, and he has experience in manufacturing, consulting, and new business development. He's worked on several projects on global industry involving the analysis of the potential of different materials in a variety of end markets. His packaging experience started at Proctor & Gamble as a manufacturing engineer in their family care business unit. Today, David and Andrew will interpret the information included in the Snack Foods Packaging and Processing Market Assessment, providing insights and detailed information, including consumer trends, e-commerce trends, and industry forecasts by snack types. So just a few points before we start the webinar. If you have any questions at all during the webinar that you'd like to ask of David or Andrew, in the bottom left hand corner of your screen, you'll see a participant feedback box. Please type them in there, and we'll ask them at the end of the webinar. Their presentation has chalk full of information, so it'll last anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes, and they won't answer your questions at the end. So at this point, I'd like to welcome David and Andrew from DeNovo, and turn the webinar over to David. Thank you, Paula. Thank you very much. Good afternoon to you all. Thank you all for attending this webinar, so my name is David, and I'm Andrew. So as Paula introduced us already, we both work for the company DeNovo, which is specialized in B2B marketing consulting. Our office here in the U.S. is located in the Philadelphia suburbs. That's where we are right now, and we also have two offices in Germany and in China. So we recently finished that investigation for PMMI on the North American Snack Food Market, and the following is the presentation. The following presentation is the overview of our findings. The full findings can be found in the report that PMMI already published. So after a brief introduction describing the goals of the study, the market segmentation, we'll give you some numbers, market data, about the Snack Food Market nowadays. Then we'll look deeper into what are the main Snack Food Market trends. We talk about the trends and challenges that are faced by the CPGs in the industry, and then we'll have a look of their unmet needs before we reach the conclusion of this presentation. So the goal of this study was to actually refresh a 2012 study made on the Snack Food Market to provide PMMI members within the market trends, the CPG challenges, the unmet needs, and really the idea was to understand what are the implications in machinery investment in the next two to three years. So we target the Snack Food, both the sweet and savory segments, and we were focused on North America, especially on the USA, which dominates the North American Snack Food Market. So Snack Food can be defined as a small amount of food that is usually used for live meals or for eating between meals. It's more and more being seen as a meal replacement, actually. Snack Food is something that can be eaten in a hurry or in a casual manner, and that does not require any preparation. Snack Food does not need to be heated in the microwave or does not need to be filled, for example. So on this slide, what we show you here is the methodology that we use during the three months of our investigation. So we combine secondary research with mainly primary research. So we interviewed key players along the Snack Food value chain, which is described in the upper right-hand side corner. You see the main players we've interviewed, which are co-backers, brand owners, retailers. We did also talk to a few OEMs, which were contacted by PMMI and who were willing to share their insight with us here. The pie chart at the bottom shows you a breakdown of the type of player we talked to during our investigation. So to the surprise, you see co-backers, some retailers, and mostly brand owners. The reason why the slide is about brand owners, the brand owner category is so large is that it actually includes a number of co-backers for whom their own brands actually make most of their business. So we place them in the brand owner section here. The next two slides describe here the sweet and the savory snack segments and sub-signments that were part of this investigation. So on the sweet side, we have five main sub-signments that were confectionary items, bars, snack cakes and donuts, cookies and biscuits, and fruit snacks. Just as a note, I would add that for the purpose of this study, we actually put aside all dairy and frozen products. So as I said, frozen products were out of scope because they need some preparation. And dairy products, mostly yogurts, are not necessarily designed to be in as a snack in between meals but more as part of a large amount. So we omitted those in the sweet snack category. Next, on the savory snacks, we actually have a higher number of sub-signments. We have the traditional salted snacks, popcorn and rice snacks, crackers and biscuits, processed snacks. But we've also added four more recent categories of snacks which, as you'll see later, are growing fast. Those are the meat snacks, the nuts and seeds, the cheese snacks and the fresh snacks. Of all those four categories, you'll see the combination snacks which usually include a combination of all different types of food elements. Those kind of blur the lines here. So we haven't put a sub-segment dedicated to combination snacks because they actually encompass different types of food but they are counted either in meat snacks, if they are mostly made of meats or cheese, in the cheese combo category, if they were mostly made of cheese. So I will now let Andrew give you some details on the current state of the snack food markets. Okay, thank you David. So just very quickly, if anyone is not hearing us very well, please flag it to Paula and Paula can let us know. Okay, so I first want to start here with just a little bit about the snack food market both globally and in North America. And then after that we'll delve into certain snack food market trends and start talking about the impact on packaging. Okay, so on slide 8 right here, let's talk a little bit about kind of a global snack food market, see where North America fits in there and just some market specifics in general. So if you look at the charts at the top of the slide, you have a chart that kind of depicts market shared by region, some North America segment information, sweet and savory, and then we've got growth rates in the top right corner, regional growth rates. So I think the key learning here is that while Europe and North America are the two largest regional markets in terms of share and revenue, they're also the slowest growing markets which kind of make sense as well as they're developed regions in general. The developing markets of the Asia Pacific region, Latin America and Middle East and Africa are really experiencing the greatest growth. In North America, just a quick aside here, the sweet segment is worth about 60% of the market and then the savory segment controls about 40% of the market as it is today. Some regional specifics in North America and Middle East, you've got meat snacks that are growing relatively quickly. So meat snacks will also include some of those combination snacks that David is talking about right now, where you have your meat and maybe a healthy component, that kind of thing. In Asia Pacific, you've got refrigerated snacks like cheese snacks, you know, and cheese combination snacks that are growing relatively quickly. In Latin America, you've got sort of crackers and rice cakes that have experienced significant growth. In Europe, you've got dips and spreads, other types of combination snacks that have grown relatively quickly. Finally, globally, nuts and seeds exploiting the better for you trend are the fastest growing sub-segment. Also, they're very fast growing in North America and we'll get into that in just a little bit. Okay, so on this next slide right here, let's delve a little bit more into the savory side of things. So the global savory snack market was worth about $100 billion in 2016. Growing at a rate of about 9% over the next two years, or just under 10% growth rate, so it's a relatively decent growth. North America represents the largest market regionally, just under 40%. However, it is growing at a lower rate than the global growth rate. So it's just under half of the global growth rate is what North America is experiencing. So as we mentioned, meat snacks, combination snacks really are growing very fast in North America. Globally, you've got nuts and seeds that are the fastest growing sub-segment that are also really playing a big role in North America and Europe as well. So okay, so on this slide, let's talk a little bit about the sweet snack segment. So in the 2016-17 timeframe, it was worth about $55 to $60 billion annually. If you look at the table, we have some market specifics there that are associated with specific sub-segments in the sweet segment. So again, the key learning here is that you have snack cakes and confections that are your two largest sub-segments on the sweet side, but they're only growing at about an average growth rate. Whereas your snack bars and your food snacks, which are the lowest in terms of market share and size, are experiencing the greatest growth, really exploiting the better for you and single-serve trends. In terms of cookies, right now they've experienced a certain, they've stalled, cookie growth is kind of stalled right now, but we don't really believe this is the most long-term trend just because people are still going to keep buying Oreos and things like that, but just in this moment, we know cookie growth has slightly stalled. Okay, so now let's go, let's talk a little bit about some snack food market trends and really start relating that to packaging and their impact on packaging, equipment, and the space in general. Okay, so on this slide, you can see a list of the most frequently mentioned consumer trends during the primary research, during the interview phase. So you've got CPGs here that were the sort of primary group that were interviewed, but we also spoke to a number of OEMs, PMI members, and we're grateful for that, who gave us their views on the market and their customers as well. So the top four consumer trends in terms of, you know, that are playing a role in terms of packaging, equipment, impact, and are just being noticed in general are the better for you snack trend, the single-serve trend, so lower portions, lesser calories with a better for you trend, you might have production lines that are entirely dedicated to healthy snacks, and we'll get into that a little bit more later. With packaging and resealability, you want food that remains fresh because you want to take it and move it around. You've got an increasing number of flavors, so you've got flavor variety, you've got growth in combination snacks that can act as meal replacement, you've got growth in size variety, you've got an increasing awareness in terms of recyclability and desire for recyclability, see-through packaging, personalization, and especially young consumers want their sort of unique personal desires satisfied, food safety and guaranteeing food safety, and finally generic packaging, and by generic packaging we are talking about sort of having simpler packaging with sort of clear ingredient labels, the top three or four key ingredients, not really having like hydrogenated oils and that kind of thing. So those are key consumer trends that were mentioned during the interview process, and on the next slide we can see a list of the key retail trends that were mentioned as being important. So the top trend here is shelf-ready packaging. We're going to get to that a little bit later as well, but a quick synopsis, I mean probably you guys all know about this, but it's secondary packaging that is ready to be displayed on the shelf as is. So without unpacking the individual snacks one by one there are clear benefits and we'll talk about those. There's an increasing desire for stand-up pouches as well. From a retail perspective it helps with sales and marketing, you can print cool stuff on stand-up pouches essentially. There's an increasing desire for lower case counts. For smaller, for easier to open cases and smaller cases, those last three that I just mentioned really help with inventory management and streamlining, you know, unpacking costs and reducing them. Finally we talked about having smaller primary packages to really exploit the single-serve trend from a consumer perspective and then having more and more products available to entice more consumers to look at the shelves. Okay, so on this next slide let's go into a little bit more detail with respect to the better-for-you and single-serve trend. So the global healthy snacks market was worth about $20 billion in 2016. Growing at a rate of about 5%, so there's some good growth there. The goal today is to label ingredients simply and clearly on the package as I mentioned before, having maybe the top two or three ingredients mentioned. People like to know what's in their food more and more and want to be aware from a health perspective. So young consumers as I already mentioned really are driving some of these trends, the better-for-you and single-serve trends. They're more and more health-conscious, they're aware of what they're eating and also they want a lot of their unique desires satisfied as I already mentioned. And finally from a combination snack perspective, a lot of these combo snacks are really including a healthy component and are serving as meal replacement alternatives. So what does this mean from a packaging perspective? So growth in better-for-you snacks implies a potential investment in machinery for bars, so floor wrappers, for nuts and healthy chips. So pouch fillers including form fill seal machinery and also SRPs or shelf-ready packaging-based case packers. And then for combination snacks you're going to need a lot of tray fillers there. So we really expect growth in investment in those types of machines. And so with continued innovation OEMs can continue to meet the needs of the CPG space and the market in general. And what does the single-serve trend mean from a packaging perspective? You'll need faster primary packaging equipment to be able to keep the rate of production at least the same. Typically you reduce packages, but that typically reduces your overall production rate, so you want to increase the speed of these primary packaging machines to be able to keep things at least the same. Okay, so on this next slide, let's talk a little bit about kind of this explosion in number of product options, this explosion in skews that's been driven by a number of trends. So first of all, and I've kind of mentioned this a couple of times now, there's millennials today or sort of young consumers, quote-unquote, have a really wide variety of needs. Everyone wants kind of their own needs satisfied. And it's different to how families traditionally purchase their snacks. So that means that there needs to be more product options out there in terms of the actual food, more packaging options, that kind of thing. The growth in single-serve as well. So what does that mean? You've got traditional larger-sized options that have remained available on the market. And you also have now single-serve options, so smaller packages with lower portions that are available as well. You have also increased the number of flavors that are available. You know, again, tying into what we were talking about in terms of satisfying unique designers. And finally, the better view trend is playing a role here. You've got your traditional options that are still available, and you now have a lot of healthy options for the different sub segments that are also available. So what does this mean from a packaging perspective? You have a huge number of SKUs today and an increasing number of product options. You need to have a machinery that is flexible enough to be able to run the different types of packages. To be able to run the different types of sizes. To be able to execute changeovers very efficiently. And so that's the impact kind of on packaging, machinery, and flexibility from the growth in the number of SKUs. Okay, so on this next slide, let's talk a little bit about flexible packaging, which is obviously very interesting in many different spaces, including in the food and beverage and the snack food space. So overall, some market specifics here. So globally, the flexible packaging market was worth about $100 billion in 2016, experiencing some decent growth as well currently and over the next few years. On the US side, the US had about 25% of the global market in 2016. The key point here really is that while the global rigid packaging market remains larger, the global flexible packaging market is growing much faster. And what's that growth been driven by? You know, the appearance and demand for unique types of stand-up pouches. You've got quad-packs, you've got toy-packs, you've got a number of them that are playing a role and CPGs are paying attention to that. So you need machinery that is adapted to these different types of unique packages. The benefits of flexible packaging is probably self-explanatory to most of you guys. You know, they're better suited for printing, so that's a great marketing tool. They take up less space on average than similar rigid packages. And then of course, the multilayer films allow for food preservation and longer shelf life. So there's a lot of demand as well for resealable flexible packages. You know, that continues to help with food preservation.  So that's going to continue to drive growth in zippered stand-up pouches and from a packaging equipment perspective, that's going to mean growth, more growth in form-filled steel machinery, which we're going to talk about a bit more later as well. Okay, so now let's get into e-commerce and kind of talk a little bit about its impact on packaging. So let's first define e-commerce. So e-commerce is essentially all snacks that are sold online. So your typical online retailer is the likes of Amazon. You also have your traditional retailers like Walmart and Kroger that have online options. And so the key here is that these snacks are sold online that are delivered to your home. You don't have to move and go anywhere. So if you look at the table, there are some market-specific that are associated with some specific sub-segments here. The point to show is that you still have some relatively low sales numbers and revenue generated by the e-commerce portion of sales in the different sub-segments. But the e-commerce segment is growing at really large rates, 10, 20, 30% in the different sub-segments. And so it's going to continue to play a huge role and it's going to grow in terms of its impact over the next few years. So what does that mean from a packaging perspective? First of all, its impact on packaging has been confirmed throughout the primary research phase by a number of CPGs. And so we know, for example, that certain CPGs are in negotiations with the retailers regarding producing lower case counts that are specifically geared for e-commerce. You want packaging that is called online ready, that is ready to be shipped as is and that minimizes the repacking effort. So having smaller cases, lower case counts, easier to open cases, ideally if you can produce cases or if you can produce packages that are just ready to be shipped as is without having any unpacking and repacking done, that's the ideal. But the approach there is going to be via the smaller cases and the lower case counts and that kind of thing. So that's the impact that e-commerce is having on the packaging equipment side right now. And OEMs are going to continue to have to pay attention to that. Okay, so on this next slide right here we already touched upon SRP a little bit and now let's talk about it in a little bit more detail. So the shelf ready packaging trend is one that is being driven by Walmart and Kloger and typically especially Walmart, a big leader in terms of influencing other retailers to catch on to certain trends. So what is shelf ready packaging? Again, secondary packaging that is ready to be displayed as is on the shelf. You're not unpacking individual snacks one by one. You're just removing essentially the top of the case. And now you've got a display and you've got your primary packs that are ready to be pulled from the shelf. So what are the benefits? It reduces unpacking costs so that's clear. There's certain marketing and brand promotion benefits as well. You can display cool graphics and just cool messages essentially on the cases themselves. From a packaging equipment perspective, what does that mean? There are many different types of shelf ready packaging. So that puts significant pressure on secondary packaging flexibility. Your case packers and your secondary packaging equipment must be flexible enough to run the different types of SRP based cases and it must be flexible enough to reduce downtime while running the different cases, that kind of thing. Other important retail trends that we mentioned lower case counts, easier to open cases, small cases, all that helps reduce inventory management costs as well. And finally, just to end this section on market trends, let's talk a little bit about kind of the theme of sustainability and we'll split that into two sort of segments. Material usage and then sustainable packaging so sort of recyclability. So on the material usage side, the growth of the single server and the lower case count trends means that unit material costs increase. So the material costs that are associated with producing one snack unit essentially increase as you reduce the size of these packages. So that means that a lot of CPGs are going to be focused on trying to reduce material costs there. The increase in the number of product options, the skew explosion, means you have more changeovers, more downtime. So reducing material usage is one way of reducing overall inefficiencies as well and helping mitigate the impact of having more changeovers. And finally, reducing material usage helps achieve sustainability goals. You can use that from a marketing perspective. So we talked to a number of CPGs and a few of them have told us really that one of their top priorities is to focus on finding ways to wrap primary and secondary packaging more tightly around concepts. That's something that's already being done in Europe and Asia and they want to see more of this in North America as well. So there's a belief that there's going to need to be innovation in primary and secondary packaging equipment to make this happen, and I know it's a general statement, but what's been mentioned was there may be a need to integrate primary and secondary packaging processes in order to allow for this optimal usage of material. And so we'll touch upon that later as well. So from a sustainable packaging side, so while consumers, what we found is while consumers are of course most more aware of sustainability issues and there's a greater desire for recyclability overall, lack of packaging sustainability is not currently an obstacle to purchase for consumers, and it's not likely to be over the next two to three years. This is a more long-term thing. And so all the better for OEM and CPGs right now because CPGs have tried running different packages that contain post-consumer materials or recycled material, and have had trouble doing so. So there needs to be an improvement in material to packaging equipment compatibility, so not just on the packaging equipment side, but on the material side as well, to be able to include recycled materials more efficiently in packaging processes. And so one last point here, sustainable materials and recyclability has been described as more of a customer-driven phenomenon than a consumer-driven phenomenon. It's retailers that are trying to get ahead and thinking about, well, when are consumers really going to start caring about this rather than consumers actually requiring this right now and demanding it as a requirement for purchase. So over the next two to three years, not a huge obstacle, but will be important in the long term and so it's important to pay attention to this but only in the long term. So I'm just going to pass it back to David right now to talk a little bit more about industry trends and challenges. Thank you, Andrew. So in this next section, we'll discuss the main trends and challenges that are witnessed and faced by the snack food industry. And I will start with a few words about the latest regulatory developments before talking about the importance of contract manufacturing and then highlighting the use of probiotics and other industry trends. So the main regulations that were discussed during our investigation were the Food Safety Modernization Act, which is the latest law addressing food safety and thus impacting the snack food manufacturers. But we also talked about the USDA standards. They have been mentioned by the CPGs who are known as meat and cheese mostly. We say that those standards are even stricter than the effecimate standards. That is why Combo Snacks, for example, are usually developed by meat and cheese companies like Oscar Mayer, Sargento, rather than traditional snack food companies which are not used to deliver with the stricter USDA standards. So the main drivers behind those stricter and more complex regulations are clearly food safety and product tracking. And it's not only the regulator that pushes for more complex regulations, but even food companies themselves they get aware of this and they want to avoid the costly product recalls that will be triggered by food contamination. So what it means in terms of CPGO variations, then first there is a need for more stringent documentation and reporting. There are some new labeling requirements, especially for tracking of goods and ingredients across the value chain down to the consumer. And mostly there are increased efforts to ensure cleanliness of the processing and packaging line. On the packaging side, this is obviously true for primary packaging equipment, but also to some extent to secondary packaging equipment. It's not only been the CPGs, but also the OEM leaders who have unanimously emphasized the importance of food safety. Even interviewees that were not necessarily aware of the impact of FSMA, they all reinforced the need for improved sanitary design for the processing and packaging equipment. So what does it mean in terms of impact for that equipment? First, there is a need, as I said, for improved sanitary design, mainly processing, but also primary packaging. The objective is really clear here. CPGs want equipment that they can clean more effectively in less time. They would like to go as far as wishing for an equipment that could be completely washed out. About a third of the technical interviewees would talk to mention the importance of sanitary design when they choose their equipment. There is also an increased need for metal and foreign object detection equipment, and that also includes x-ray machinery. CPGs have mentioned to us the need to install a greater number of detectors throughout the processing and packaging lines, as earlier detection can save a metal scratching cost in downtime. The sooner the detection occurs, the greater the saving. This is an important benefit for the CPGs who look to save as much as they can on their operation front in order to mitigate increased expenditures on raw materials and logistic costs. The main conclusion of this regulation outlook is that we see more investments coming in the next two to three years towards especially metal detectors, magnetic separators. X-ray machinery will fit also here in those investments as they can fly defective packages after they have been sealed, but this is a technology that is typically more expensive also. The next big trend we've noticed in the snack food industry is an increased reliance on contract manufacturing, not only from smaller companies, especially the newcomers to the snack food market, but also the large brand owners. We can confirm to us in our talks with OEMs who have acknowledged greater sales, sometimes two to three times more sales coming from co-parkers than brand owners. The co-parkers need more equipment to produce a wider variety of snacks. They also have a lower hand for marketing costs, so they can focus more on spending on equipment. That increased reliance on contract manufacturing has also been acknowledged by brand owners, even the large ones. The competition globally is increasing in the snack food industry. There are newcomers coming, especially to invest in the better-for-you market, so even the large brand owners nowadays they feel the heat of that competition coming from smaller companies. This is a reason why they outsource some of their production in order to be helped with their production. They also mentioned the rise of installing and operating new production lines as a reason for outsourcing their packaging operations, and that also allows brand owners to focus on the marketing aspects rather than the operation and the packaging aspects. The main conclusion here for us is that sanitary design of equipment is going to be key for contract manufacturers. Contract manufacturers want equipment that is easier and faster to be cleaned. They have cleaning costs that increase as they deal with a greater variety of products with smaller batches of snack foods also, and they face tooth odyssey, not only from the regulator, but also from their own customers, the brand owners. So that's more reasons for why sanitary design is key for contract manufacturers. So then, let's have a talk about the use of robotics in the snack food industry. All companies across the board, all CPGs, small, large, have acknowledged that the use of robots, the greater use of robots could help them satisfy their throughput goals, especially in primary and secondary packaging application. For example, on the primary side, robots could specifically improve pick-and-place-feeling capability for sticky items like bars, for example, but also for tray-based snacks like the combo, the combination snacks. On the secondary side, robots could help improve higher precision case loading, especially for shelf-ready packaging applications, as Andrew explained before, with shelf-ready packaging being more and more demanded by large retailers. That being said, CPGs with TOTU, even the largest one, they still see robotics technology as an expensive technology even today. They have told us, in some cases, they fall back on hand-packing operations when it's necessary. So we definitely see a need here from the OEMs to educate their CPG customers about the value and the affordability of robots. But for those reasons, we don't actually see many CPGs investing in robotics heavily in the next two to three years. It's more likely to happen when we cover down the road in five or ten years from now. So some of the challenges that have been mentioned during our investigations is the use of sustainable packaging, as Andrew described before. Some CPGs have tasted lightweight packaging or recycled materials, and have had issues achieving top speeds with their machines. So there is a need here for improvements, not necessarily only on the equipment side, but also on the material side. On a technology standpoint, CPGs have mentioned the difficulty of managing all the data they have access to now. With more and more equipment being connected to computers being automated, CPGs have access to a greater amount of data than they used to be, and they still see some difficulties to manage solar, all that data, and use it efficiently. They would like to see improvements being done here in the way they can extract and analyze all that data. Finally, on the supply chain aspect, there are concerns growing, especially with the rising cost of transportation. So that's another reason that we mentioned before that puts even more pressure on machine efficiencies in order to balance those increased costs. So I will now let Andrew talk about the main unmet needs of CPGs today, the snack food market and how that affects the packaging and the processing equipment. Yeah, okay, so thank you. Thank you, David, for that. So as David said, let's start talking a little bit about unmet needs and the impact on packaging there. How many on the part of CPGs? I should say. Okay, so on this slide, you can see a list of the most frequently mentioned unmet needs during the interview process when it comes to packaging equipment. So machine flexibility, we've kind of touched upon that and why it's important, really is the top priority. The need for faster packaging machines, which is especially relevant when we talk about smaller package sizes, and we'll talk about that, ease of cleaning and sort of sanitary design, food safety, having higher quality and more detection equipment per line, per lines as David touched upon. Overall equipment effectiveness, so ease of maintenance, ease of operation, having more flexible vertical form for seal machines, reducing lead times when purchasing machines and replacement parts and that kind of thing, and also reducing machine footprint. So those are key unmet needs that are mentioned during the process, and let's go into a little bit more detail on some of these right now. Okay, so on this slide, let's talk a little bit about kind of a really top two unmet needs, machine flexibility and machine speeds. So we've talked, you know, quite a bit throughout the presentation now about how there's been an increasing number in product options on the shelf and they're available on the market today. There's a greater number of package formats, a greater number of package sizes, and so machines must be able to run different types of primary packs, different types of secondary packages, and they must be able to do so efficiently. Chained-over must be efficient as well. On the secondary packaging set specifically, we've already mentioned this, but with SRP, shop-ready packaging, there's many different types of SRP-based cases, so that means that there's huge pressure on case packers and other types of secondary packaging equivalent to be flexible from the different types of cases. And so this, I mean, we've heard from a number of CPGs that it's a top investment criterion at their companies when it comes to the next wave of packaging machines that they're going to purchase. So OEMs would do well to heed this advice in their view, in our view, and going forward over the next few years. So in terms of machine speeds, having smaller primary packages as we mentioned means you need faster primary packages to maintain the rate of production. Similar with secondary packages as well, with the cases. People want smaller and smaller cases, e-commerce is fun to roll there as well, because that's easier to unpack and just easier to store as well from an inventory management perspective. And that means that your case packers are going to need to be able to run a greater number of packages per unit time to maintain the rate of production as well. It's not to improve it. So also having product diversification as well, having a greater number of product options available means you're looking for efficiency gains in any way you can find, and increasing machine speeds is one way to help reduce some of these inefficiencies there. And finally, increasing competitions. There's increasing competition in the marketplace in general. You have many more smaller players that are appearing on the marketplace. You've got co-packers. You have all kinds of companies that are producing snacks. And so if you can increase packaging speeds, it helps from a competitive perspective and reducing costs overall. Okay, so on this next slide right here, let's talk a little bit more about kind of sanitary design on the ease of cleaning and touch upon food safety. I know David already spoke about that. But if we speak about sanitary design, that's mainly relevant obviously for processing equipment and primary packaging equipment, like for for some machinery, other power fillers, other types of equipment there. The goal really is the ability for machines to be completely washed down. So without damaging electrical equipment, for example. And reducing areas where the food can build up, the food can pool. So the AWFVAC's Leadership Network, another point here, the AWFVAC Leadership Network has developed clean-in-place guidelines that I'm sure a lot of people have heard of. They are relevant in terms of really providing guidance on how to clean interior surfaces of machines without disassembly. So it will help CPGs wash down as well. Talking about food safety, David already mentioned this, but the more and more CPGs are going to be investing in more and more metal detectors and installing them throughout packaging lines and not just at the end of them. So packaging and processing lines. Because what that does is you can help, you can reduce the cost of recalls. You can catch contaminants earlier and also reduce some of your scrap material costs. So if you catch, for example, contaminant later in the process, you might have already sealed your snack, so you'll have to scrap more packaging material there. What it does is it will guarantee food safety, and this can be used from a marketing perspective as well to entice consumers. So there are two key trends that were also mentioned. David touched upon them, but very important for all of you. Keep paying attention to those. And from an investment perspective, metal detectors, magnetic separators, machinery that can be completely washed down, all that's going to be very important. Okay, so on this next slide. So mentioned ease of maintenance. You know, it's all about reducing maintenance costs. So referred to as well as overall equipment effectiveness. People want, you know, CPGs weren't machines that can run for many shifts. You know, more and more shifts without needing to be sort of maintained and dealt with. They want less moving parts for machine if possible. I know that all that's easier said than done obviously, but they consider to mention these things as being important. Can we reduce the amount of effort and time and money that we spend and we allocate to maintenance? Ease of operation. So these days you've got big turnover in operators and the workforce when it comes to manufacturing, especially for, you know, large-scale manufacturing. So you want equipment that is easier to operate so you spend less time training these operators if possible, maybe less HMIs per machine. Easier to use HMIs. And so just overall, can ease of operation continue to be achieved? I'm sure it is for a lot of equipment. I'm sure it can, it's, you know, not perfect for other equipment. Can it be improved? And finally, overall machine footprint. I mean, machines like certain partners and horizontal form-filled steel machines, which we're going to talk about on the next slide, take up a lot of space. So for example, on the FFS side, if you have vertical form-filled steel machines, that reduces the footprint. You can have redundant machines. It's a big selling point for the CPGs. But we're going to talk about the issues with regards to form-filled steel machinery and why it's important to continue innovating there right on the next slide, which leads me to, there we go. So on this slide, we have a selection of such a pros and cons that were mentioned by sort of CPG experts when it comes to the use of horizontal and vertical form-filled steel machine. So the big benefit with vertical FFS, as I just mentioned, is that there's a much lower space allocation. They take up less space than horizontal form-filled steel machines. That allows for redundant machinery. So they can also run pillow shaped pouches efficiently enough. But the big problem with vertical FFS is that they can't run zippered or unzippered standard pouches as well and as efficiently as horizontal form-filled steel machinery. At least the majority of them can today. There are certain wraparound issues that we've heard mentioned by CPGs in terms of materials, wrapping some of the zippers, wrapping and causing downtime. They also can't run premade pouches. They can't run that at all. They need roll stocks. Whereas horizontal form-filled steel machinery, while they take up a lot of space and generate a lot of waste, they can run fan-up pouches efficiently. They can run premade pouches. It's just a more flexible machine in general. Of course, cheaper, but really more flexible vertical form-filled steel machines that can really run fan-up pouches efficiently enough, including the zippered kind of standard pouches. Okay, so just to conclude the portion, the segment on Unmet Needs. A lot of CPGs talk about innovation. I know it's a general concept, but we've heard a few examples of how they believe there can be more innovation in packaging equipment. So there's a general belief that innovation has been too incremental over the last 10 years in packaging equipment. An example would be, if we heard an example about a certain type of partner, for example, there's different cartoning suppliers that might have, they might be the best at certain qualities. So for example, company A might have the best partner for quality A. Company B might have the best partner for quality B, and so on and so forth. And all these different companies had patents that were associated with these different qualities. And so the belief is that for a number of these machines, for example, a number of these qualities, a lot of the patents have expired today, but there hasn't been a much effort, at least that's the feeling from CPGs, the perception there, not enough effort to kind of combine the different innovations and make sort of, erratically improved machine for different types of packaging equipment. Now, of course, all kinds of, in general, in any industry, customers are going to say that we want cheaper machines, better machines, more innovation, but that's something that we heard a few times mentioned during the primary research. Another thing that we've already touched upon, the optimization of packaging usage, is the long-term goal, which is to tighten and to wrap primary and secondary packages around contents more tightly. So that will really help reduce material usage and material costs. And there's a belief that there might need to be an integration of primary and secondary packaging processes to make this happen. For the technical details there, I mean, it's really not clear, but again, the word integration was used a few times to kind of talk about how maybe primary and secondary processes can innovate to be able to achieve material reduction goals. And finally, in terms of robotics, David already mentioned that really there's a perception that a lot of robotic equipped technology is expensive. That's probably true for some types of machines, maybe not so true for others. There needs to be greater education, as David said, in terms of the market being aware of affordable options. But continued R&D investment from a robotics perspective is important over the next few years, because more and more down the line in the next five, ten years there's going to be much bigger investment in robotic equipped technology. In the next two or three years there might be some investment in some types of robotic equipped machines, but overall really it's more important in the long term. In the next five to ten years. Okay, so that was kind of a summary of the unmet needs portion of the presentation. I'll leave it to David to conclude and I'll touch upon with a couple of points in there as well. Okay, thank you Andrew. So let's wrap up this presentation by highlighting the key findings of our investigation. We'll start with the main trends in the snack food industry. If we look at market trends, better for you will continue to play a key role going forward. It's forecasted to keep every snack investing in that better for you trend is expected to keep growing fast. Same can be said for combination snacks which also likely to continue along a fast growth trajectory. On packaging trends, we see flexible packaging still growing. There is still room here for flexible packaging replacing rigid or traditional packaging types. There will be a focus on shelf free packaging. Retailer, especially the large ones wants to streamline their business so that helps them a lot here. As for packaging sustainability as we said probably not very important for the next two to three years, at least not a blocking point for the consumer. But it's a long-term goal of CPGs. On the retail side, the number of skews will continue to grow and that's going to be driven by the growth of e-commerce. The increase demand for more flavor variability as well as more, as well as a greater size variety across all types of snack foods. Just to summarize some of the main demands from CPGs, we've already mentioned all this stuff but just a quick summary. The top demand is really for greater flexibility and increased speed of packaging machinery, especially secondary packaging sign and that's driven by the SRP trend. A need for improved sanitary design driven by the Food Safety Modernization Act, general food safety goals. Finally, CPGs really wish to see more disruptive innovation rather than incremental improvements. As I mentioned, ease of maintenance, ease of operation, reducing lead times, machine footprint reduction, and also dealing with the perception that robotically equipped technology is too expensive. And finally, the key takeaways about where we see investment in machinery going in the next two to three years. So the top three areas where we see more investment are towards more flexible and faster secondary packaging equipment. We also see a greater demand for vertical form field field machinery, especially if those vertical FFS machinery catch up with the horizontal counterpart in the areas where they are still behind. And we do see also increased investment in metal detection equipment, especially to guarantee food safety. Other areas that could drive investments in equipment are more flexible and faster pouch filling machinery. All equipment that would be associated with fast growing segments. We do see CPGs also purchasing a dedicated line for better-for-you products, like for example gluten-free or allergen-free products. And finally, the increased reliance on co-parkers mean that OEMs will keep seeing more orders coming from co-parkers and more owners in the next few years. So we'd like to thank you all for listening to us during that webinar. If you have any questions, we do our best to answer them as much as we can in the next few minutes. Absolutely, and thanks for listening to us, guys. David and Andrew, thank you both. It's a great presentation. There's a lot of information here in this webinar, but there's also a lot more information in the report which you can download on PMMI.org slash research and search for snack foods. So I want to thank you on the great reflections you had about the issues in hand in the snack foods packaging and processing industry. Again, please put some questions that you might like to see answered in the participant feedback box on the left-hand corner. I do have a couple questions, so I'm going to read them off to you. So the first question is, is there a plan for co-packing linked with any specific type of packaging format, such as like our pouches of format requested more to co-packers than others? Right, so I would say that not necessarily. And I'll tell you why I'm not saying a yes or a no here. It's not necessarily because you'll find a lot of, you'll still find, so for example, if we look at nuts and seeds, you'll find a lot of contract manufactured snacks that are like in cups, the rigid cups. And so there's a lot of demand for those as well. Those will go, for example, in a lot of 7-Eleven convenience stores. You'll have a lot of those actually in retail stores as well. So it's not, and some of me we've heard specifically throughout the primary research phase, but we do know that there's significant growth in flexible packaging in snack foods, and there's greater growth on the flexible side than the rigid side. That's something that we know for sure. There's going to be definite impact on contract manufacturing operations. We do expect them to be dealing with more flexible packages. It's not something that we heard specifically that they're only doing the flexible because the rigid types of packages, like the ones I just mentioned for nuts and seeds, are going to continue to be important. Okay, so that kind of led right into the next question. Somebody was questioning about shelf-ready packaging. Do you see that trend mainly for flexible or is it, you said they're still rigid, so you think that's still going to be the thing where flexible is definitely increasing, but rigid hasn't lost its hold? Yeah, so that's part of it. That's definitely a part of it, but there's something specific as well with SRP. What I would say is that the start of this trend was really associated with nuts and seeds and certain types of snacks there, but nuts and seeds that were packaged with flexible packaging. Some of the benefits that we spoke about earlier, some of the benefits of flexible packaging, they take up less space, right, and they're also great for printing. So with the SRP, you can have great graphics as well on the sides of the case, but with flexible packaging, you can have tall packages that don't take up so much space and you can fit a lot more of them within certain SRP-type cases. So it's definitely going to be geared more towards flexible packaging. Started with nuts and seeds. There are certain brands that are very relevant, I think. I was walking by Kroger the other day, and David Seeds is a famous type of snack, I'm sure, and that's an example of a type of product that was really important, I think, at the start of the SRP trend as well, and they're flexible packages. You fit a lot of them in the SRP cases, and it's really going to be geared more towards flexible packaging. Great, thank you so much, Andrew and David. So another question we have, from your perspective and your experience in working and conducting this report, do you think these North America trends and consequences will also apply to other regional snack markets? Yes, so I would say for a lot of them, yes. So give an example. So you know how we mentioned the importance of reducing material usage? I mentioned Europe and Asia as already being two regional markets where the view from CPGs here is that a lot of the snacks there are this concept of wrapping primary packs and secondary packages more tightly around the content and optimizing packaging usage. That's something that CPGs view as already being widely done in Europe and Asia, and not so much here. So that's a difference in terms of something that's done that CPGs would like to see more in North America. In terms of flexible packaging, I would say that a lot of the trends with flexible packaging are worldwide, but what I would say is for shelf-ready packaging, for example, that's really a North America trend. Shelf-ready packaging is a big North America thing. Probably in the long term it's going to be important elsewhere as well, but when it comes to marketing and brand promotion and just the likes of Walmart really leading the way and innovating from a retail perspective in terms of enticing consumers, that's really an example of something that's really relevant for North America. In terms of other important trends that we mentioned, I mean sustainability for example, I think with recyclability that's an example of a trend that's more important in Europe than it is in North America right now. So there's, I think for example, camera work countries, but there are certain laws when it comes to packaging waste. You pay by the pound I think or by the kilogram in terms of mass of waste in certain countries in Europe. And so the idea is how can we reduce our waste? Well reduce the weight of your materials first of all, but also recycle more of your products too. That's more important in Europe. A lot of other trends I think are similar overall, but I hope that gives a good first perspective on some of the differences and similarities between Europe, Asia, and North America. Fantastic. Thanks so much for that explanation Andrew. Absolutely. So right at this point that is the conclusion of our webinar and I would like to, on behalf of PMMI, thank you for participating in today's webinar. As a final note, you will receive an email to complete an evaluation for today's webinar. Let us know how we did. Let us know how the topic went. And let us know if there's any topic that you'd like to see us do or report our webinar on in the future. As I mentioned in the participant feedback box, this webinar will be posted on PMMI.org slash research in probably 24 to 48 hours. And we also have a webinar coming up on July 12th. It will be our third quarter quarterly economic outlook report. So you should be getting an email on that or a notice for that shortly. So please sign up for that webinar. Our economists are some of the funniest ones I've ever seen. And if you think you can talk about the economy and be funny and you've never heard that, you have to tune into our webinar and listen to it. It's great. So once again, on behalf of PMMI, thank you so much for joining us today. Andrew and David, great presentation. Thank you.


Hi everyone, welcome to Medical Curiosity. My name is Christina and I'm a second year medical student at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine. Today we'll be learning about fractures. A fracture is a break in a bone. Have you ever broken a bone before? Or do you know anyone who have broken a bone? Your bones are very strong and can almost always stand up to the pressure you put on them. But if the pressure applied on a bone is too much, the bone breaks. People who are over 75 years old are more likely than younger people to break hip bones. The reason is that their bones are not so strong and bones are easier to break as people get older. So here's a question for you. Where is the smallest bone in the body? Pause the video here to choose an answer and when you're ready replay the video. The answer is the year. The smallest bone in your body is found in your inner ear. It is about the size of a grain of rice. Bones are made up of calcium. Bones are very much alive as much as your heart or brain. For example, astronauts in space who spend time in weightlessness conditions lose 1 to 2% of bone mass every month. Just like your muscles, if you do not use your bones, they will weaken. Your bones are made of active connective tissue that is constantly breaking down and regenerating. You get a whole new skeleton every seven to 10 years from this process. Bones are crucial for you to move and function. Bones protect your delicate organs, but the heart and the brain. They also produce 240 billion cells a day. One of the most common places to break a bone is the arm. What do you think your arms are made up of? Pause the video here to choose to think about this and when you're ready replay the video.  Bones give your arms support. Arteries and veins are fancy words for tubes that carry blood to supply oxygen. Nerves help you move your muscle to catch a ball, play video games and feel things like petting a dog. Muscles help move your arm, wrist and hand. So what should you do if you unfortunately break your arm? First, keep the arms still. Secondly, get an ice pack for the pain and then call 911. Next, how can you tell if someone has actually broken a bone? To do so an x-ray is performed. Can you see any fractures in this x-ray image? Sometimes broken bones heal themselves and other times surgery is needed to fix the breaks. Here is another question for you. If babies have 305 bones, how many do adults have? Pause the video here to choose an answer and when you're ready replay the video. The answer is 206 bones. As we mentioned earlier in very bad breaks, it may be necessary to have a surgery to put metal rods or plates into the body to hold the bone pieces together. Sometimes these screws, plates and other tools are left in the body forever. During surgery, a clean area is needed so that you do not introduce bugs into the person which is very bad. Doctors wear gowns and gloves. Massive caps are worn to prevent bugs coming from the mouth and hair into the person too. In total, how many bones do you think Evel Kineville broke? Evel Kineville pioneered motorcycle distance jumping. Pause the video here to choose an answer and when you're ready replay the video. The answer is 433 bones which is a world record. Finally, before we end, we have an important topic to talk about. How can we keep our bones healthy? Pause the video here to think about the question. When you're ready replay the video. Some of the many things that we can do to keep our bones healthy include drinking milk, consuming dairy products for calcium, avoiding drinking too much soda products, exercising, wearing homeless to protect our skull, and wearing knee pads and elbow pads to protect our knees and elbows. And that wraps up our presentation on fractures. I hope you enjoyed this presentation and thank you very much.


Hi everyone, I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com and that is today's brand new release very exciting 2020 panini flawless football Both briefcases pick your team number one from jaspyscasebreaks.com a very big. Thank you to all of these folks here For buying their team straight up, which I appreciate And you can see there are some R&B's we did some random number blocks in different videos There's Robert with last spot mojo star next to his name And there's everybody right here. So here are the number block Randomizing results again the randomizer itself is in a separate video So it works just like that number block break that you see often on jaspys, but it applies only to those teams Obviously only for picker team one Here's the the other group right here as well. It's for that set of teams Now pick your team two if I'm looking at jaspyscasebreaks.com pick your team two is Down to six teams left and As of now no fillers or anything like that So if you want to go knock out one of these flawless breaks straight up that'd be awesome All right, let's set some of these right next to me over here This right over there There's the case flawless Flawless was the case that they gave me. All right, so let's slide one of these briefcases just off camera here There it is Good luck Fingers crossed take a deep breath This is it's hard to hit in these breaks, but if you do you're gonna be very happy Yeah, yeah, yeah, come in spectate This is the teddy. This is the last 2020 product of the year. I'm pretty sure So I think everything after this will be 2021 stuff. All right, so I'm not trying not to peek Teddy can peek into the encased cards. I will not Here's the slider box first. There was a good one in there. All right. All right that right over there Empty box. All right Put that blank card up there just a slow play of the hits in case you can see on the top camera there to add a 20 Jarvis Landry Cleveland, this is for you Arthur Hackett with that one Remember public service announced and always be careful of the top blowers. There is a shortage out there So sometimes you have to use larger topplers putting blue painters tape on there to make sure they don't rattle around too much But be careful with those if you're removing them. Jerry Judy nice three-color patch five out of 15 for my rivals The Broncos Katie with Denver Could Aaron Rodgers go to Denver? Aaron Rodgers talk is dominating the NFL headlines. I think we got Cole Comet 10 out of 10 He has a new quarterback throwing the ball to him Chris with the Bears We got another autograph Minka Fitzpatrick 15 out of 25 Steelers are a number block team. So if you're not familiar with the number blocks, here's how we do these We go by that digit right there Which is five 15 out of 25 so that goes to Pittsburgh five That's gonna go to Matthew Sheeran with Pittsburgh five Next up is Steve Largent Two out of fifty I like how Steve Largent signs on the line right here. He's like, yeah, that's that's where it goes Yeah, I'm old school. Yeah, he's a really good. He's a really good kid.  And the last one out of here is wow five out of five Ray Lewis patch auto And Yeah, the Ravens patch always looks so cool. What time is it take?  What time is it game time? What time is it game time? I think Reebok in the locker room of my high school my high school rival Oh, so he shot it at Gorton High School in Yonkers Nice. I wish there was like a I wish you had like an alarm clock Man from Ray Lewis yelling at you Now wake me up pretty quickly. What time is it wake up time? And you're like, yes. Yes, mr. Lewis right away, sir All right the encased cards We'll go try to go non-auto first. We'll go left right. Is there three in here left right center? Yeah left right center We've got nice Kevin Green RIP right 18 out of 20. Oh That's when you oh, wow, I think I think it might be Teddy's fault All right Don't wear anyone else's jersey ever again Pittsburgh eight That'll be for PJ. All right, right side. Oh, right, right, right train whistle for that I was just so excited about Ray Lewis forgot about the train whistle Ravens Aaron Billingsley has the Ravens All aboard the big hit express What time is it train whistle time? Thanks, HP. All right On the other side. I know we're so scared of Ray Lewis five out of ten Derek Thomas sapphire legend sapphire Another deceased past rusher. Yeah Memories here. All right chiefs are a number block team. So KC five is Michael Belfi all right and The middle one is ooh out of 25 Justin Herbert 14 out of 25 old Herbie Yep Chargers is an are a number block team. So Chargers for we go by that digit right there just directly to the left right here Chargers for Andrew Roth There you go Andrew Nice. He's got he's got great penmanship to what you what you always like There you go. There's more. Oh, yeah, and there's that card that says The the gems are naturally mine not lab grown All right. Yeah, that's right. Jason Jaspy picking the case. Thanks to him Now what's in the second half of the first half was like that better or worse about the same Try not to peek inside the case itself. All right, there we go. There's the slider box There's the blockchain card I was talking about use that blank card drop that right over there No cards hiding inside there The blockchain is Justin Herbert Wow Blockchain rookie patch autos platinum. Is that a one-of-one a one-of-one digital card? That's pretty strong Matthew Shearer with number zero all aboard the Big Head Express. Whoo. Whoo. I think the platinum is a one-of-one I'll give that is awesome. There you go. Nice Matthew Shearer with the number zero. All right Let's see what we got We have four out of ten Antonio Gibson and Washington is a number block team a random number block team in R&B So that'll be for Washington for and it'll be for Peter. We got a triple relic. We got Terry Bradshaw Tom Brady and Joe Montana eight out of 25 triple relic That's a randomizer one happy person two sad people Steelers are a number block team so that Steelers eight you're involved That's PJ Buccaneers Picked up straight up by Paul Norden and the Niners picked up straight up by Victor. We'll do that the end flawless finishes Otis Anderson 16 out of 20 New York football Giants are a number block team so that goes to Giant six kind of hard to see right there, but it's 16. So giant six is Joe Joe K Nice, what did Otis Anderson do in the third quarter drive that defined Super Bowl xxv Anderson carried for as many as 24 yards and as few as one the one coming on his go-ahead touchdown Plunge added up the rushers carries amounted to 102 yards and the game MVP honors In a performance that gave the Giants their second title in franchise history. There you go some good memories If you remember that particular Super Bowl onwards, we got Chad Johnson four out of 25 two-color patch and autograph for Ocho Cinco Bangles Sean Maddock picked up the bangles straight up Hank remembers that game. He was a b-sec. He was an animal next Jared Allen three out of three Kansas City great that goes to KC three Which goes to PJ there you go PJ with Kansas City three and out of fives and under of course get the train whistle All aboard the big hit Express whoo-hoo Nice Yeah, he was a fourth-round pick had they known exactly what kind of player Jared Allen would become the Chiefs wouldn't have let Them tumble into the fourth round of the 2004 draft the steal of a pick flashed the game Flashed the game of a first rounder as soon as he arrived not she nine sacks as a rookie Wow In 2007 he powered to a league high 15 and a half sacks. That's a lot Nine in his rookie season Yeah, he's got a good teddy saying he's got a good shot the Hall of Fame All right a couple more here. We got Michael Pittman, Jr. 21 out of 25 the receiver going to Kurt picked up the Colts straight up and the last one here is one out of two Ezekiel Elliott. Look at this You see the bit of yellow right there that must be some field paint That looks like Nice patch nice autograph Dallas picked up straight up by Josh Hoffman.  I wonder what game They're talking about They're saying them during the during the drubbing Elliott splashed through Miami's front seven and finished the contest with the game 125 rushing yards in week three. I wonder if that's actually from week three There might be a yellow paint scheme inside all the Dolphins colors on their field or I Don't know we'll see but that's pretty awesome Josh All aboard It's a good-looking card. All right, let's see what we got here left right center on the left side We got sapphire Berry Sanders nice color match four out of ten Detroit Lenny with the Lions on the other side we got Brett Farve six out of ten sapphire Packers Packers six Packers six is gonna be Over here on this list this list Sean Maddock with Packers six Brett Farve weighing in on the air in rather situation says he's not gonna go back All right, and the card in the middle two out of two Record breakers autograph drew breeze Nice passing yards in a career Gold the green foil that is looks really sharp on this card Nice Saints That's for that's for Lenny with the Saints Lenny All aboard the Big Head Express Nice. All right Naturally mind not lab grown pretty nice stuff Thanks everybody. Let's do a randomizer To finish off this break pick your team to in the store Let's refresh that page any fillers for that. No no fillers yet six teams left. I feel like we can do that You can do that straight up if we wanted to All right, so there's some new dice. Let's get a new list here And let's grab everyone's names Terry Bradshaw Pittsburgh Brady Tampa Bay Edition and Joe Montana Niners edition team on top gets it after a hard eight four and a four eight times one two three three four five six Seven and eighth and final time. Good luck after eight times goes to San Francisco And that is for Victor Victor. Congrats to you After eight you got the eight out of 25 triple relic some great-looking stuff ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe for jasky's case breaks calm. I'll see you next time for the next flawless break. Bye. Bye


Welcome back to likable science here on think tech Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen with me today in the think tech studios is Jason Ignacio from Hawaii energy connection. Welcome Jason. Thanks. He does great. Have you here? Likeable science is all about how science is a vital and dynamic part of everyone's life It's not something. It's just done in remote laboratories. It really impacts all of us we all contribute to it and Jason works with this group Hawaii energy connection that really I think exemplifies a whole lot of that So maybe give us a quick overview about Hawaii energy connection. Sure white energy connections Basically a photovoltaic energy installer, but that's not all we do We try to do more sustainable energy solutions as you know, the climate changes here in Hawaii with respect to policy and new technology We need to be sensitive to that. So we are a contractor that currently installs photovoltaic on rooftop and commercial and we also do energy storage and we just launched a new product with the photovoltaic for electric vehicle charging Very cool. Very cool. And you do a little piece with hot water stuff, too, right? As well as hot water Yeah, so new technology with a new twist on an old, you know, it's not your grandmother's water All right. Good. Good. Excellent. And what is it? Let me just start it by saying by asking What is it you really you really like about your work? What does it really drives you? It's always changing. It's never the same day today Be it policy be a technology Dealing with different clients I get to meet a lot of different people and explain how systems work how they can save money How it's a great investment. So there's you know financial Touches them on that there's a technological reasons and there's some sciencey reasons as well And then there's just practical and then you know statewide goals on being sustainable here in Hawaii So it touches on a lot of things that I think are are kind of need to be in touch with and it's an industry That's never never gonna go away. Right. We're always gonna need energy We're always gonna try to do things sustainably moving forward, right? We were both at the Blue Planet Palana yesterday, and they're great thing about pushing that Sustainable energy 100% sustainable energy by 2045. Yeah, what a goal what a goal and must be great to be part of that It is it's rewarding in fact that we're trying to help Yeah, right and and we're really getting in on the grassroots level where people can Kind of vote with their dollars with their own money and investing in a PV system that helps Hawaii reach that goal Right, and there's there's constant shifts in the tribe that there's been subsidies supporting it And these look like they're on their way out maybe and right and so the whole market has to readjust to that There's a lot of things that come into play financially with it At the end of the day, it's still a great investment There's different things that factor into that like what type of tariff Hawaiian Electric is gonna offer They've changed from a net metering energy metering tariff to a grid supply tariff And that will change to a customer self-supply and they all have different value implications for anyone who's investing in a PV system On the tax credit side State still gives 35% tax credit on systems and the federal government still kicks in 30% tax credits So you know about the 65% of your system paid for in a form of tax credits. Oh, that's great Incentive, yeah, I didn't realize it was still out that much. That's one. Yep. That's wonderful And it's it's really nice now that the the technology is evolving. So there's a lot of different options, right for people it can be More off the grid if they want but others can be very much integrated into the grid where they are both a user But also a supplier. Yes need be, you know, yeah energy storage is coming online very quickly Primarily because the customer self-supply Tariff that Hawaiian Electric is it's gonna be offering in the near future to offer it now But it's still grid supply is a good option because they still compensate you for some of that energy with 15 cents per kilowatt hour When energy storage becomes more of the norm We can see that price drop drastically Yeah, right now if you buy a PV system with storage It's it's as if you were buying a PV system when PV first started being offered Your paybacks in about the 10-year range, right as technology got better That price and that payback time the return on investment got to less than five. We're not far. Yeah, excellent So and there are these these different components of it. There is that the PV itself, right? But that's by no means now sort of the end of that that used to sort of be what people did, right? Which is sort of stick PV on it. We kind of call it dumb PV You put it out in the sun and it makes electricity It just blasts it when the sun is out and when the night nighttime comes it stops, right? You know and it's sort of an inverse correlation as to when we use the energy, right? So our big energy uses in the evening Evenings and there's no sun right running all their stuff. Yeah So managing that flow of energy either into a battery or onto the grid and diverting it to where it can be used at That point in time is a huge technological obstacle both for the utility and on a small scale We call edge of grid or where people are using the energy and generating it in these distributed energy resources They call DERs. Yeah, that's right I was just thinking that's got to be a very tricky Sort of algorithm because if you've got a lot of different points that are producing this energy Storing it up. Mm-hmm, but then also using it all at the same time How does the grid deal with those various inputs outputs? You know the engineering problem That's basically what happens. You need to manage it and it needs to happen at almost instantaneously it can't happen, you know over an hour's worth were calculated because Renewables are not constant. They're consistently changing. That's the only thing that's constant about them is wind always changes clouds go over PV systems a leaf can fall on it, you know Different things can factor into the production as well as the home's individual load You can have a refrigerator kick on kick off pumps lights whatever things vary during the day Measuring that and managing that so that we have a consistent profile to show to eco and the grid is super important for stability for safety and for For payback for storing that energy on a really well-managed basis, right indeed He who at various times put it more pre-case in the past than now has really had Almost objections to people feeding into it because it added elements of instability on into what instead if they've just got one Plant producing power. They know pretty much how much power is there at all times and you know they can measure it very easily but when they have inconsistent or called variable inputs on the distributed energy resource side it can cause a lot of problems on the grid but I mean it's just It's the it's the same kind of problem that's occurring everywhere though as we get new technologies, right? I mean the thing now one of the big things is self-driving cars, right? Everyone understands when we get on all the cars on road or self-driving We're gonna have a much better system right now much lower good luck. We have many fewer accidents It's all gonna be good better fuel efficiency right, but things that the transition is a little bumpy Well as they call it. It's disruptive technologies. They change the way that we do things. They're a good idea They work. It's how much can we get to that point of where we get critical mass adopting it to the point where it makes sense for Everyone there's just there's a equity equity type of question is to I'd love to have rooftop solar But I don't have a roof, right? I don't know my home Right, how do I get involved and I think one of the things we saw last night at the Blue Planet Foundation? What they're lobbying for is community solar right whereby folks can invest in a solar system Even though they don't have a roof right they can buy in and invest in one to help Offset the cost of installing those systems and help and still help move forward with renewable energy generation Yeah, I thought it was a beautiful example. It's very forward thinking absolutely technologies here. Yeah, and So it's it's it's intriguing that you've got a Some what do we want to say inertia from the system, right? We've always done it this way and you've got investments in infrastructure and equipment that was set up 10 years ago 20 years ago in some cases and yet you're now having to try to be very nimble and adjust very quickly to Changing demands changing technologies the uptake with solar and white happens so quickly. We just were in this great zone a lot of Sun good incentives and then The price of oil shot through the roof So everybody's electric bills got really high and that's when we saw the payback in the return on investment Really drop into the less than five-year time frame and you know over 12 times the expected amount of PV Suddenly appeared right. That's right. We had everybody here with 200 photovoltaic contractors here in Hawaii Over 200 contractors and they're going door-to-door knocking and hey you want PV it's gonna save you money Let's do it and before you knew it yet PV on your house So before you know he could realize that this is kind of a lot Right, so they've they tap the brakes a few times and now they come out with a with a plan with the PUC to Have a real structured environment where PV is being integrated onto the grid That's great because it's it really can't you can't operate too easily in a sort of wild west kind of environment Exactly, it's certain people drive investors away. They'll drive the public away It's not good for Hawaii when we have fly-by-night contractors come in here to capitalize on a boom, right?  That's It's attached to your home, right? It's lifespan is 25 years plus or should be right in the best cases So having someone who's gonna be there and really controlling that that that uptake Kind of ran away from us. Yeah. Yeah I mean we've seen a bit of that out in Micronesia where I where I work with they'll put in they've been some some of these More remote islands they put in a big PV systems But then one component breaks and the whole system is just down and there's nobody literally nobody for a thousand miles You can fix it, you know and the equipment or a piece needed to fix it Maybe halfway around the world and nobody knows how to order it where order it from what to do and The system stays down for a six months or a year and Yeah, it's and I think that's gonna be more important as the technology evolves because like I said dump PV was pretty simple You put it on your roof you hook it up you connect it and you're done you make electricity now We have to manage it a lot smarter and with the different tariffs There's requirements now and and types of equipment that can and can't be installed and connected to the grid and You know, there's a lot of things that go into it on the customer side Sometimes they get a little baffled by it, but we as a as an integrator solar and renewable sustainable energy system Renewable integrator we have to be conscious of those things and and and flow with it or we fail, right?  Which are really not just batteries although you sort of think of them in terms of batteries But they're they're really maybe smart batteries. Maybe is the word well Batteries are batteries are like a bucket for water, okay, right? Basically, you're just storing it how fancy the bucket is and how much it holds how you can that's great But how do you get water in and out? How do you get power in and out of a battery, right? That's the thing that really is the technical part. So Part of it they want to bring up that first image is is energy management control and that can be as Something it has to measure what's being produced by the PV system, right? And also what is being used by the home, right? So we're gonna see our image of our that first photo Hope And that's since it's technology, right? It's electronic It's something that one of our partners helped us develop because we said we need something that's gonna help us integrate And we can't just think about putting it in a battery We need to think about a larger scale like how do we how do we get reporting? How do we get a? Management dashboard and how do we get the data? It's part of the data, right? How do we integrate these things and then aggregate them, right? So we can see what all the PV systems are doing in an area and what all of our systems are doing to the grid and what? They're doing with the battery storage, right? I mean each one has its own individual history of how fast it's been accumulating Storing energy how fast it's been dumping out energy and being using energy It's patterned in terms of if it's three o'clock in the afternoon sort of what's likely to happen in the next hour Sure, both everyone's home is on a slightly different Plane from the Sun, but then yes your bigger thing is then linking all those together and being able to because that Information is very important to Hico and others to know what to expect. Yes We can forecast it we can manage it if we can measure it We can make changes that we need to if we're not measuring it that's dumb PV just pumping out electrons Excellent. We're gonna explore this in more depth when we come back right now. We're gonna take a brief break Jason Ignacio from Hawaii Energy Connection is with me here today on likable science. I'm your host Ethan Allen. We'll be right back Aloha, my name is Kirsten Baumgart Turner, and I'm the host of sustainable Hawaii at thinktech Hawaii comm We air live on the internet and also on Oceanic Channel 16 I'd invite you to come for a fresh new show Every Tuesday from 12 to 1 o'clock. I try to bring on guests that give us Different viewpoint on aspects of sustainability in Hawaii as well as trying to unpack some of the difficult concepts of Measuring and achieving sustainability particularly with regard to Sustainable economic growth and prosperity in Hawaii Please join us every Tuesday from 12 to 1 p.m. Mahalo Aloha And you're back here on likable science. I'm your host Ethan Allen with me today is Jason Ignacio from the Hawaii Energy Connection and we're talking about not just for photovoltaics, but sort of sustainable energy systems that are being sort of the new second generation or third generation maybe of Photovoltaics is it's photovoltaics, but storage smart computers basically integrating all this and It really happens on at least two levels one is for the individual home residential or Commercial center system right then to those systems all have to start talking to one another and talking to the central network Right and I think we have an image coming up here that that'll help maybe maybe allow us to talk about that a little more organized fashion Yes, yeah, so at the top of this this energy see the PV generation and that's kind of what we've had in the past In the center of this now is that computer board that I was showing it's the EMC or energy management controller That gives you visibility as to what the PV systems producing and what the home is consuming We can look at home load monitoring. We can also look at energy time of use now Those things are very important when we talk about what types of Tariffs are coming down from HECO when they start maybe doing a time of use billing. Oh, yes And also it integrates battery backup and scalable smart storage Which when you look at energy storage it helps to stabilize the grid profile meaning how much do we export and import from the grid? with a PV system integrated so let's say that We store a lot of energy in these batteries that are now attached to people's homes The grid goes down not only they have battery backup, but there could be a potential for the utility to Use the energy in your battery. You could sell it back right to the grid in those times of outages Or if there's a peak usage that not even an outage if they just need more, right? They don't have to turn on another Fossil fuel burning plant to make more energy They can have an agreement with you saying like only through these peak hours You mind if we take a little bit energy from your battery as long as they're paying you peak rates That's part of it. We have to figure out and that's something I think that that Policy-wise will come but overall we're looking at that will open up the grid Because when we're more stable on the grid when there's more ebb and flow on a local distributed level What they call edge of grid the plants don't have to work as hard, right? if indeed sort of looking at it in sort of the Ultimate case if every user basic also had a large storage capacity The whole thing is just buffered out very very evenly then To some extent almost doesn't matter what the central grid is producing, right? I've got a lot of storage capacity that can just feed in as needed or take out as needed Yeah, and that makes it Gets us to that goal a lot quicker because Running a large generating plant with peaks and valleys and peaks and lows It's it's like driving your car in traffic. You're not going to get the best mileage, right? And that's that's sort of what dumb PV was doing, right? It was oftentimes dumping extra and artificially Lowering the generating plant from HECO to a very low level and then all of a sudden when Sunlight goes down and everybody's use go up. They'd have to ramp up their generation very quickly That's a huge technical problem. It's very expensive to do, right? Yeah Interesting interesting so And then these these power blocks are sort of there's technologies in terms of I guess you talk about the control of Feeding in them feeding out in that it's constantly evolving even if the battery per se is maybe more or less can be Yesterday's technology if need be Yeah, and that's what we try to do is try to integrate stuff that's available now It'd be great if we could have you know those high-tech graphene batteries or charge very quickly can discharge quickly And they're very responsive, but the price of them is just not to where a homeowner would be able to purchase it Yeah, it's it's just not there yet. We hope that will be that's exciting stuff. Yeah, it's that's I mean Sort of cutting-edge. It's always the issue is melding these different kinds of technologies and sometimes fairly Seed-to-the-pants kind of ways And there's a lot of developing there's flow batteries that are coming online that are that are being developed I think Harvard's working on a flow battery where it's non-toxic. They're just using you know aqueous solutions to store Electricity so non flammable non-toxic very renewable long life We don't know what that's gonna look like in 10 to 15 years. So we'll see but the the management part and the Sustainability of making sure that the PV energy goes into a battery effectively is compliant with the rules and regulations set forth by the utility or You have folks that like to do an off-grid system, you know So as it's not quite feasible because you need so much battery capacity, right? It's just a lot if you're willing to invest in that and some folks have to because they're in areas that the To run a line to their house is more expensive than buying those extra right capacity batteries So we're looking at scalable solutions that help, you know, not only help to provide energy for Home use and emergency backup, but it's for grid integration. So there's algorithms that are programmed into those Circuits that measure all those uses and make split session split second decisions on whether it should curtail the PV You mean turn down the amount of generation on the PV put more into the battery We've also integrated some smart Things in there where you know future of smart home technology Maybe it'll turn on an appliance to use some of that load while the PV is still on and the batteries are full Right, you can envision in a smart home connect to a smart system It would decide you've loaded your dishwasher and it decides like when your dishwasher should best go on really to make Make the most efficient use of the power and maybe that's 2 a.m. Maybe it's 10 p.m. Maybe it's 6 a.m. Yeah, absolutely. So home management systems tied in with with your energy management system Yeah, it's really evolving to the point where you can really make a big difference in your energy use profile and maximize savings and Really help the grid So say a little bit if you would about about this hot water system This is not just a standard you're not just pumping water up through black PVC pipes on the roof so this is a system we brought in a few years ago and It's pretty ingenious so instead of using pumps like you said and pumping the water through big Thermal collectors where the water is heated within the panel It runs off of PV electricity So there's two heating elements that are actually powered by PV panels that are on your roof So instead of running plumbing up to the roof It's just conduit and wires. They're much smaller. There's less weight There's less load on the home and it integrates beautifully with PV because of the same size panels So the efficiency on them is it's you know, at least as good if not better than traditional hot water systems So these are essentially then hot water systems directly integrated and powered by Photovoltaic panels. Yes. Oh very very cute and they don't require Approval from Hawaiian Electric because they're not backfeeding electricity. They're in essence Water heater is a storage. It's storing the energy as heat in a container that's insulated, right? How we heat that water is through a renewable resource with the PV electricity So it's an electric heater, but it's powered by PV panels, right and water I hadn't realized that I was reading your yourself Heating hot water in a home is a huge 45% of those are stats from Hawaii energy and some national statistics that show that about 40% of the home energy Uses and heating water. Yeah, that's that's Amazing and so yeah, if you can just do that instead and I mean that's again It seems like sort of a no-brainer for a lot of people that yeah I think a lot of folks have made that first step and it doesn't matter what type of water heating you're doing If it's thermal or the new PV systems. It's um, that's Typically what we can see is for as savings and then you've just become that much more renewable, right?  Yep. Yeah, so it's again It's a sort of win-win-win here. We're sure excellent. Yeah, that's super um I think we had another image issue sure if we can bring up like a simmich three This is sort of how the the electronic or electric vehicle PV charger works. So you have a what's called a PV micro grid It has a energy management controller which then can feed into The batteries and we have what's called an automatic transfer switch which If the batteries are not charged enough it can pull grid power if it needs to And in parallel it can pull PV energy from your existing PV system What it does is it charges the batteries in the daytime So you can plug your car in at night. We can go to the next image. It's just showing The basic connection.  We haven't gotten that far technologically speaking But you can use the energy if you've stored it during the day, right? Okay So most people that that get electric vehicles, I think are Environmentally conscious they want to be responsible sure and they want to be green And and save money on gas and reduce our our our fossil fuel dependence on Driving a car that's run on gasoline right and that was one of the things jeff brought up last night That's the biggest next hurdle is transportation. Right. It's huge But when we charge our cars at night, you're burning fossil fuels, right unless you've stored that energy Right, but for the system. I see you're saying you do this at your own home And the solar energy you've stored during the day And sort of depletes your home batteries but charge your car's batteries It makes your EV even greener right now because you're using renewable energy Yeah, that's it together evens out that load Absolutely, and it provides a critical load backup outlet just in case These systems are designed To work even if the grid is down so those batteries will be charged, you know, maybe in an emergency You're not going to be driving anywhere, right because it's not safe to drive right, but the power goes out You still have some reserve power within those batteries To plug in a couple of things, you know, whether it's It's not huge loads that you could plug into it But maybe it's your your emergency, you know critical loads that you want to have plugged in Keep your freezer cold Keep the phone charge keep the radio going A few basic stuff, okay medical equipment, especially That's a huge one if you have medical equipment that needs to be on Of course, I have to have to have that kind of backup and some folks at home as well Nebulizers those things. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this is this is great. This is it's very exciting to look at this and the scene of the as you say it sort of it's a Endless frontier is here. I mean, it's just new stuff coming all the time new technologies are kicking in new policies are enabling The better use and more effective use of things. So it's got to be very very exciting There's always a challenge with it and and folks of you know, there's there's been numerous hurdles where people say it's not worth doing anymore Well, every time that we come up against a hurdle, there seems to be an innovation that gets us over that hurdle Whether it's, you know, all the grid is saturated. We can't implement any more pv. Okay. Well, let's solve that and move forward So it's an exciting field and In it's helping Hawaii do a lot of Good things and moving towards our goals. Super. Well, it's been very exciting to learn about it. I thank you so much Jason for coming Appreciate it. And uh Jason the analysis from hawaii energy connection. You've been watching likable science. I'm your host Ethan Allen. I hope you'll join us next week Thanks very much. See you again