Why Reshoring Is Quietly Reshaping Who Buys Packaging Equipment

I've had a version of the same conversation four times in the last two months, with four different companies, in four different states. Someone tells me they're bringing a product line back to the U.S. — sometimes it's a full plant, sometimes it's just the last mile of assembly — and almost as an afterthought, they mention they now need to figure out packaging equipment for a facility that didn't exist a year ago.

The rise of new buyers in packaging equipment market

That's the part of the reshoring story that doesn't make the headlines. Everyone's talked about the jobs numbers and the ribbon-cuttings. Almost no one's talking about the fact that a whole new category of buyer just showed up in the packaging equipment market — and a lot of them have no idea what they're doing yet, because they've never had to.

The numbers behind the conversations

The Reshoring Initiative has been tracking this for years, and the trend line is hard to miss. Reshoring specifically made up 78% of those announcements, up from 67% the year before. Add it up since 2010, and you're past a million jobs tied to production coming back or landing here for the first time.

Jobs numbers are the easy thing to count. What's harder to count, but just as real, is every one of those facilities needing a packaging line, a case former, a labeler, a palletizer — something. That's a lot of first-time equipment purchases happening at once, made by people who, six months ago, were sourcing finished goods from overseas and never had to think about any of it.

A different kind of buyer

This matters because the packaging equipment industry has spent decades getting really good at selling to a certain kind of customer: an experienced plant manager who's replaced this exact machine three times before, knows the vendors, knows the specs, knows what questions to ask. That buyer isn't going anywhere. But sitting right next to them now is someone building a line from scratch, who's never had to evaluate a packaging vendor in their life, and who's making a six- or seven-figure decision on a timeline that used to be someone else's problem.

I've sat in on enough of these conversations to notice the pattern: the newer buyers ask different questions. They care less about squeezing out the last percentage point of throughput and more about "will this actually work with the team I have" and "who's going to help me if this breaks in month four."

What this means heading into the fall show season

If you sell packaging equipment, this is worth sitting with for a minute. The instinct is to keep selling the way you've always sold — to the buyer you know. But there's a second buyer in the room now, and they're going to be walking the floor at PACK EXPO this October right alongside everyone else, trying to figure out who to trust with a decision they've never made before.

The equipment side of this industry has always been good at engineering. The companies that win this next wave are going to be the ones who are just as good at explaining themselves plainly to someone who's never bought a case packer before — and who don't make that person feel behind for asking.

I'll be at PACK EXPO this year talking to exactly these people — buyers and vendors, first-timers and twenty-year veterans. If you're one of the companies feeling this shift from either side of the table, I'd love to hear how it's actually playing out for you. That's the conversation I think this industry needs to be having out loud, not just in hallway conversations at the show.

Katie Steinberg covers the people and conversations behind the packaging industry's equipment buying decisions. Reach out if you've got a story worth telling.