The German Packaging Award awarded by the German Packaging Institute (Deutsches Verpackungsinstitut, dvi) has been around for 60 years. In the anniversary year, 34 designers, developers, manufacturers, and users were able to convince the top-class jury of their packaging innovations. The winning solutions covered a variety of materials, segments, and areas of application.
The winners come from England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria. The award was given in ten categories: digitization, functionality & convenience, design & finishing, logistics & material flow, sustainability, new material, packaging machines, product presentation, cost-effectiveness, and young talent.
Sometimes the solutions are about design for recycling or material substitution, sometimes about reducing the transport volume or saving materials, sometimes about sales promotion and consumer activation. And this list is by no means complete. The range of innovations is wide. A few examples show this.
Cooperation, Efficiency, Creativity
A recyclable mono-PE stand-up pouch for demanding filling goods, for example, demonstrates how important it is to work together in order to arrive at viable solutions. Five companies from the entire process chain have joined forces for this project, namely PE manufacturer ExxonMobil, film manufacturer Krauss, paint manufacturer Siegwerk, adhesive manufacturer Henkel and machine manufacturer Windmöller & Hölscher. Together, they addressed the problem that paint residue and non-material barriers limit the use of recyclate for many applications. The goal: to develop a system in which the packaging ultimately becomes colorless, high-quality recyclate.
Recyda is all about using digitization for more efficiency. The company impressed in the digitization category with “Recyda EPR”, a software for calculating country-specific license fees for packaging. Packaging variants can be compared to find the most cost-effective and recyclable alternative. The jury praises the fact that the platform makes the financial incentive for recyclable packaging solutions applicable to reality.
With an innovation for the Pralinenbote company, submitter Pohl-Scandia shows how efficiency and sustainability come together in a cardboard shipping package. Made from corrugated cardboard, it provides good product protection and, as a one-piece solution, replaces multi-part shipping packaging. At the same time, the handling is easy, as the jury emphasizes.
However, packaging is not just about efficiency and functionality, it also arouses emotions. This is shown, for example, by submitters Brands for Business with a packaging design relaunch for Underberg under the motto “German Romanticism meets Pop Art.” Imaginatively designed, it excites the curiosity to pick up the packaging and occupy oneself with the brand, according to the jury.
Good Ideas by Young Talents
FACHPACK is a premium partner of the German Packaging Award and has primarily promoted the young talent category. After all, this is where the future of the packaging industry lies. Students from the FH Münster, HTWK Leipzig, and BHT Berlin won the race. The overall winner in this category: SandKit, a combination of cardboard packaging and emery paper or sanding block in one product. The jury was impressed by the well thought-out, practical but also attractively designed concept. The jury also awarded BattPack, a battery pack that allows full and empty batteries to be stored neatly separated from each other, for being smart and innovative. Finally, TrinkSchach is a plastic bottle with a screw-on lid that turns it into a chess piece when opened. In this way, a game can be “assembled” from many bottles. The jury says they would buy it for the next barbecue and just start play.
If you want to know more: all award-winning solutions can be found on the dvi website. The German Packaging Institute, in cooperation with the premium partners FACHPACK and igepa Group, is inviting guests to the award ceremony and the announcement of the Gold Awards, an award for the best of the best, on September 13th the Meistersaal at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. More information about the event is available here.
Congratulations to all the winning innovators!
