The winners of the 2026 Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design (PIDA) Awards reveal an industry moving beyond incremental packaging improvements towards solutions that integrate circularity, usability, accessibility and digital functionality.
Organised by the Australasian Institute of Packaging, the PIDA awards recognise packaging innovation across Australia and New Zealand. Held last night in Melbourne, to coincide with the foodpro exhibition, this year's awards showcased innovations spanning consumer packaging, industrial applications, sustainability initiatives and professional excellence. All category winners are now eligible to represent Australia and New Zealand in the 2027 WorldStar Packaging Awards.
A clear pattern emerged across the winning entries, reflecting trends we've seen playing out in the wider packaging industry. The strongest takeout is that circular economy thinking has progressed beyond material substitution alone, with greater emphasis on reuse models, design for recovery and closed-loop recycling. Also notable is that consumer convenience and accessibility have become central design considerations, while digital functionality and traceability are increasingly being integrated into packaging solutions rather than treated as optional extras.
But perhaps the most enduring message from this year's awards is that sustainability is no longer a category in its own right. Instead, it has become an expectation that underpins good packaging design across virtually every category.
In the food category, top honours went to Primo Foods and Amcor Flexibles for a peel-and-reseal sliced meats pack that combines improved consumer functionality with a 10 per cent reduction in plastic and a recycle-ready mono-material PET structure. In beverages, Graphic Packaging International and Asahi Beverages were recognised for replacing traditional shrink wrap with a kerbside recyclable fibre-based wrap for Carlton Dry six-packs, demonstrating how fibre continues to replace plastic where it delivers both environmental and operational benefits.
Health, Beauty & Wellness winner Impact International demonstrated another important trend – designing packaging for recyclability from the outset. Its mono-material HDPE tube and cap range replaces the traditional PE/PP combination with a single-material solution incorporating Australian-made post-consumer recycled content, allowing both components to enter the HDPE recycling stream together. In the Domestic & Household category, Yates Group's Click & Grow Garden Care System showed how packaging design is also improving safety and usability, with a contact-free refill system that eliminates direct handling of garden chemicals while making controlled dispensing easier for consumers.
Another characteristic shared by many of this year's winners is that they solve multiple challenges simultaneously. Rather than addressing sustainability, usability or marketing as separate objectives, the strongest entries combine them into integrated packaging solutions.
Bonson Packaging's RePlay Returnables system exemplifies that approach. Recognised across multiple award categories (scoring gold for Labelling & Decoration, Marketing and Sustainable Packaging Design | Reuse), it combines durable reusable containers with digital identification, consumer engagement and product traceability to create a packaging system that extends well beyond the pack itself. Likewise, the Honey Squeeze Pack from Caps & Closures was recognised across several categories (earning gold in Sustainable Packaging | Design for Recovery) for bringing together recyclability, recycled content, accessibility and consumer-friendly dispensing in a single design.
Accessibility also emerged as a defining theme. ByStorm Beauty received the Accessible & Inclusive Packaging Design award for adaptive beauty tools and packaging developed in collaboration with people living with disability. The judges recognised not only the products themselves, but an accessible unboxing experience incorporating intuitive opening features, braille and multiple information formats, reinforcing the industry's growing recognition that good packaging should work for the broadest possible range of consumers.
Food waste reduction remains another key focus. Simplot's redesigned Birds Eye frozen vegetable packaging was recognised with gold in the Save Food Packaging Design category for incorporating resealable functionality that helps reduce product spillage, supports portion control and encourages consumers to return unused product to the freezer rather than discard it.
The Sustainable Packaging Design category reflected the diversity of approaches now being taken across the industry. Rather than recognising a single winner, the judges awarded projects across five sustainability principles – resource reduction (Costa Group, Result Group & The Packaging Hippie), reuse (Bonson Packaging), recycled content (thinkpac), design for recovery (Caps & Closures), and innovations in resource recovery (Australia Post, iQRenew, RollsPack & Signet) – illustrating that meaningful sustainability outcomes are now being pursued through multiple, complementary pathways.
Several winning projects also demonstrated the growing importance of systems thinking beyond individual packaging formats. The Milk Bottle Recycling System developed by Popit Recycling, Martogg and Procal Dairies combines collection, on-site recycling and material reuse into a closed-loop model designed to improve both economics and traceability. It scored gold in the Outside of the Box category. Meanwhile, the Smart Circular Satchel – developed by Australia Post in partnership with iQRenew, RollsPack and Signet – showcases collaboration across the value chain to create an onshore circular solution for recovered household soft plastics.
Alongside the product awards, the PIDA program also recognised the people driving packaging innovation (see list below). Awards for young professionals, packaging technologists and industry leaders, together with scholarships supporting technical education, reinforce the importance of developing industry capability alongside new packaging technologies.
This year's winners show that packaging innovation is increasingly measured not by a single breakthrough, but by how effectively a solution balances multiple demands. The strongest entries combine functionality with sustainability, improve the consumer experience, and support more circular systems – demonstrating that the next chapter of packaging design is about solving connected challenges, not isolated ones.
2026 PIDA award winners by category:
Food Packaging
Beverage Packaging
Health, Beauty & Wellness Packaging
Domestic & Household Packaging
Labelling & Decoration
Outside of the Box
Marketing Design
Accessible & Inclusive Packaging
Save Food Packaging
Sustainable Packaging
People Awards:
AIP Special Awards
Young Packaging Professional of the Year
Industry Packaging Professional of the Year
Packaging Technologist of the Year
ABA Scholarship Program
AIP President Scholarship
