Barely packaged merchandise, conservative consumers

According to Béla Kertész, general secretary of the National Packaging and Moving Association, the quantity of packaging materials used by the Hungarian economy is still only half of the European average. Hungarian consumers are not too interested in the environmental impact of packaging materials and are also surprisingly conservative in some regards. – In recent years, there has been a significant improvement in the quality of packaging materials seen on shelves, but substantial differences still exist. Merchandise can still be regarded as insufficiently packaged, since we only use half as much packaging material as is used in Europe. The improvement is due to 80 per cent of the packaging industry being acquired by foreign enterprises, who have brought their expertise and know how with them. On the other hand, Hungarian consumers and manufacturers are rather conservative. Blocks of cheese are still wrapped in red foil, like they used to be in the 80’s.