The 2017 Industry Packaging & Processing Professional of the Year Award was given to Nestlé Australia's packaging manager Paul Haberland and Matthews Australasia MD Lester Nichol.
The judges were looking for individuals who have demonstrated vision and leadership, shown innovation, and have not been afraid to take risks.
These winners have made a significant and continued contribution to the packaging and processing industry over at least 25 years.
Nestlé's Paul Haberland has been in the packaging industry for 48 years and has experience with a variety of packaging mediums.
"He has a proven ability to solve problems and identify opportunities for improvement, and great knowledge and experience in manufacturing processes and analytical procedures in the food and packaging industries," the awards organisers said.
"He is able to interact with a wide variety of stakeholders and establish excellent working relationships at all levels of his organisation and industry."
Haberland is a graduate of the Diploma in Packaging Technology and is a Fellow of the AIP.
Each year, he delivers a one-week training course to all new packaging technologists in the company, referred to internally as the Packaging 101s.
He also coordinates with the packaging industry to deliver more specific training material for Nestlé Packaging Technologists.
His work on refining, testing and embedding Safety Factor theory in the design of corrugated boxes was a step-change in the industry in the 70s, and it lives on today, over 40 years later.
As for Matthews' Lester Nichol, not many realise he recognised the need for product identification and symbology, as well as the technologies and methodologies that apply codes onto products in the 1970s.
In 1978, Nichol was one of the founders of the APNA (Australian Product Numbering Association) — the forebear of GS1 Australia.
The group subsequently brought barcoding to Australia.
In the '80s Nichol established Matthews International (Australia) and he focused on what technologies (including barcoding) could bring to a business beyond mere compliance.
Because of his knowledge in implementing barcode-printing solutions, Nichol was invited to contribute to the design of the EAN/ GS1 Supply Chain Knowledge Centre, which opened in 2004.
As an example of using barcoding technology to improve overall supply chain efficiency, in conjunction with EAN, Lester led Matthews in developing a unique EAN128 carton-coding solution that interfaced with the powerful EANnet data-synchronisation tool.
