Paperboard Package of the Year
JohnsByrne Company
Kiehl’s – Advent Calendar
Kiehl’s annual advent calendar is one of L’Oreal’s most anticipated holiday releases, often selling out in a matter of days. For the 2020 edition, Kiehl’s challenged JohnsByrne Company to create a new design that offered a premium unboxing experience and eliminated the use of plastic. Moving away from the traditional plastic vacuum-formed tray and pop-up style, this fantastic design features a 100% paper-based rigid outer structure that houses 24 snuggly–packed straight–tuck folding cartons containing product. The outcome is a beautifully compact and 100% recyclable box that opens into a shelf-ready storybook display. It’s also Kiehl’s greenest holiday campaign ever. This advent calendar is a premium gift that keeps on giving, not only to consumers who keep it well after the holidays, but also to PPC’s competition. A stunning and sustainable example of both folding carton and rigid box design, JohnsByrne’s advent calendar is a deserving recipient of the 2021 Package of the Year Award.
Folding Carton of the Year
Accord Carton Company
Goose Island Birthday Bourbon County Brand Stout
Accord Carton Company’s design for Goose Island Birthday Bourbon Stout offers a premium brand experience that perfectly reflects consumers’ high expectations of the limited release beer inside. Structurally, the carton is a showstopper, offering a dramatic opening experience with a “fold-back” reveal of the bottle. A front pull–tab with reverse cuts achieves the peel-back effect while retaining the continuity of the outside graphics and avoiding a visible perforation pattern. Visually, the gold foil and glass UV stamping capture the consumer’s eye, while soft touch coating and embossing add a premium, velvety feel to the carton when held in hand. The extraordinary structure combined with specialty finishings makes for a distinctive and gift-worthy beer package design. Cheers to Accord Carton Company!
Rigid Box of the Year
Taylor Box Company
Cincoro Tequila
Take one look at Taylor Box’s Cincoro Tequila, and you’ll understand that providing luxurious, premium packaging for VIPs was the goal. What’s interesting is how it came to fruition. It all started with five A-list basketball players who wanted to create an uncommonly smooth tequila. The professional basketball players knew that the tequila had to be excellent, with packaging to reflect the same high quality.
Made specifically for a VIP audience of influencers within the professional sports industry, the box had to have a “wow factor.” Taylor Box partnered with fellow PPC member, Oliver, Inc and certainly delivered with the intricately designed, full-sized bellyband, the distinct and tall shape of the box, the gold metallic foil stamping, and the custom acrylic bottle stabilizer. The black and gold design includes the Cincoro logo throughout, branding the product with effortless sophistication. With the involvement of professional basketball players, top-grade tequila, exquisite design, and overall attention to detail all coming together in this one fantastic rigid box, anyone who receives it will surely feel like a VIP.
Sustainability of the Year
WestRock
CanCollar® Family
100% pure, recyclable paperboard. That’s all you need with CanCollar®, WestRock’s new family of multipack canned beverage solutions. Designed to replace hard-to-recycle and increasingly banned single-use plastic rings and LDPE shrink film, CanCollar® not only bypasses the plastic, it’s also entirely glue free. Instead, it relies on both a proprietary tooth design to secure the cans as well as a stiff, tear-resistant substrate that provides superior can retention and pack performance compared with competitive alternatives. Converted on WestRock’s CanCollar Fortuna™ packaging machinery platform, this design not only offers brands a robust, sturdy, and surprisingly minimalistic canned beverage solution, it allows them to roll it out at scale. With CanCollar®, sustainability meets ingenuity in a practical design that harnesses a simple, not-so-secret weapon: strong and sustainable paperboard.
Innovation of the Year
Accord Carton Company
Corona Extra South America – Circular Packaging
At first glance, you might not think Accord Carton Company’s Corona Extra six pack is all that innovative but looks can be deceiving! While the six-pack carrier appears to be made from a regular uncoated stock, the board is actually comprised of barley straw, a byproduct of the beer-making process that is normally burned or discarded. Yes, this year’s Innovation Award welcomes to our industry a brand new and uniquely circular substrate.
For three years, Corona Extra’s parent company, AB InBev, worked alongside their partner, Sustainable Fiber Technologies, to hone and create a new process for turning fragile straw into a durable fiber that could be used to make paperboard. During the testing phase, the cartons miraculously withstood being bent, torn, pulled, dropped, vibrated, and drenched in water, proving that barley straw has what it takes to be a durable and sustainable substrate. A true innovation, the Corona Extra carton inspires us to look to the future: what other non-wood materials might help us create an even more sustainable industry?
Digital Application of the Year
Zumbiel Packaging
MilkBone Custom Cartons
It’s not a stretch to say that people love and treat their dogs like family members. That’s why MilkBone wanted to offer customized, digitally printed dog treat cartons that featured consumers’ very own beloved fur-babies! In addition to working with MilkBone to create an interactive portal for consumers to upload their custom dog photos, Zumbiel designed several static and variable graphic design elements for the cartons. A testament to the novelty of the product and the excellent use of digital printing, the dog treat cartons even found their way on The Today Show! Considering the buzz on TV and MilkBone’s social media channels, these custom cartons prove that when you combine beloved dogs with clever omnichannel marketing, anything is possible.
Richard DePaul Award for Creative Design & Converting
TPC Printing & Packaging
Box in a Box
When we think of the late Dick DePaul, an industry veteran who judged PPC’s competition for many years, we think “structure.” Dick was inspired by exciting and unusual structural design. Featuring 12 structures within one compact package, TPC Printing & Packaging’s Box in a Box would certainly have caught Dick’s attention. In addition to the multifaceted nesting design, this promotional piece features silk screen printing, film lamination, Scodix digital polymer and foil, Ecoshine foil, and cast and cure film. Showcasing the power that haptics and specialized treatments can bring to print, Box in a Box is a one-stop-shop product for showcasing TPC’s excellent converting capacities.
Judges’ Award
Colbert Packaging Corporation
Carmex® Mini’s Formed Tray Multi-Pack
Combining both innovation and sustainability, Colbert Packaging’s Carmex® Formed Tray gives us a glimpse into the future of secondary packaging. By replacing a previous “plastic bubble” blister design with a unique 100% paperboard solution, the new iteration clearly delivers on Carmex’s goal of finding a more youth-driven, consumer-appealing, and earth-friendly packaging solution. The paperboard design offers a few key benefits. First, the front panel allows for full-scale product imagery to showcase the lip balms inside. Additionally, it allows for easy recycling as it eliminates the need to separate paper and plastic, a known factor in deterring consumers from recycling. Best of all, this sustainable formed tray and card design can be easily replicated and customized for other products.
Judges’ Award
Graphic Packaging International
Eco-Pi Urine Sample Collector
With Eco-Pi, Graphic Packaging International harnessed its expertise in pressed paperboard trays to expand into a new market: the health care sector. Eco-Pi, an innovative, clam-shaped pressed paperboard funnel, offers women a sanitary and dignified way to collect urine samples. It’s especially suited for patients with special needs or limited mobility. The design includes a specimen cup with a friction fit aperture as well as a convenient, hygienic handle. Not 
only does Eco-Pi address a long-time frustration for female patients, it’s also a sustainable paperboard alternative to plastic-based collection methods. Since the medical field generates nearly five million tons of plastic waste each year, Eco-Pi is certainly a welcomed solution. First made for OBGYN offices, the design has been widely adopted and is today used in pediatrician offices, retirement homes, labs, and many more locations across the country.
See all Submissions in the 78th Annual North American
Paperboard Packaging Competition Magazine
