The Packaging Council of Australia (PCA) celebrated the 2009 Australian Packaging Award Winners at the Awards Presentation Dinner held in Melbourne last Friday.
The Australian Packaging Awards are the premier Awards event recognising the best of Australia’s product packaging, highlighting the outstanding achievements of the industry and opening doors all over the world. This year the highly anticipated PCA Best of Show was awarded to O-I Australia for their Lean+Green™ Light Weight Wine Bottle Range.
Selected from all of the Gold winning entries, the judges specifically applauded the impact of the lightweight wine bottle range for its sophisticated approach to sustainability and bringing Australian innovation to the attention of the highly competitive global wine market. O-I has successfully reduced the weight of selected wine bottles by 18-28%, saving almost 20,000 tonnes of glass packaging/ annum.
The flow-on effects include a 20% reduction in energy use and a carbon dioxide saving of over 11,130 tonnes per year. Equally impressive is a saving of 12% in water usage per container and overall water savings of 4,720kL per year. Overall winners featured strong creative and original design trends and demonstrated significant achievements in innovation, functionality and overall point of sale impact.
This year the judges were overwhelmed by the number of creative and innovative packaging solutions that were presented. They noted the excellent achievements throughout the product sector with a lot of work being done in weight and carbon footprint reduction as well as consumer awareness programs. From hundreds of entries, representing the entire packaging supply chain, there were 31 outstanding winners. All of the 2009 winners can be viewed online at www.pca.org.au/results09.