As major drug makers from Johnson & Johnson to Purdue Pharma face mounting legal challenges for their role in the US opioid epidemic, suppliers of the $94 billion global pharmaceutical packaging industry are using innovation to comply with regulations aimed at preventing such crises in the future.

According to Industrial Fasteners, a new study from The Freedonia Group, the industrial fasteners market in the US is mature but still growing, at a rate of nearly 3% per year through 2023.

The corrugated box, the primary vessel of e-commerce delivery, has been instrumental to the gradual chipping away of brick-and-mortar’s dominance of retail over the past decade: durable to ensure that online orders arrive intact, lightweight to keep shipping costs down, and opaque to protect customer privacy and prevent theft. However, a number of packaging innovations – spurred in part by Amazon’s desire to boost e-commerce’s environmental profile while further reducing operating costs and increasing customer convenience – could mean the beginning of the end for the tried-and-true packaging format in e-commerce.

According to The Freedonia Group’s new Sheds & Other Residential Outdoor Storage, the outdoor storage products market in the US will total $1.6 billion in 2023.

Global demand for corrosion and scale inhibitors in water treatment is projected to rise 5.5% per year to $12.1 billion in 2023. The primary factors promoting growth include: • expanding manufacturing and industrial activity in the Asia/Pacific region and other developing areas • increasing use of water treatment equipment in all major markets

Global demand for school buses is projected to expand 3.6% annually to 66,800 units in 2023, slower than the 2013-2018 rate of increase and anticipated gains for the bus market overall. Weak school bus sales growth in the US and Canada – two of the world’s three largest school bus markets – will prevent the segment from registering stronger growth.

The Freedonia Group’s new Global Diesel Engine study finds that the motor vehicle market will remain the largest market for diesel engines in 2023, accounting for 61% of all diesel engine demand in that year. However, the prospects for the two major motor vehicle segments – light vehicles and medium and heavy vehicles – vary greatly.

According to Liquid Silicone Rubber, a new study from The Freedonia Group, the market for liquid silicone rubber (LSR) is on pace to increase 8.3% annually through 2023, propelled in part by an expanding range of products and applications.

According to Liu Yuejin, deputy director of the China National Narcotics Control Commission, the legalization of marijuana in Canada and some US states constitutes a “new threat to China”, as he attributed, more permissive North American cannabis laws to an uptick in drug smuggling into China. Liu also asserted that the number of cannabis users in China had grown to 24,000 in 2018.

According to The Freedonia Group’s new Global Protective Packaging study, flexible protective packaging is expected to grow rapidly to $16.5 billion in 2023, increasing its share of the protective packaging market along the way.