The cream of the best new pack designs of the past year were honoured in Sydney last night when the WorldStar Packaging Awards ceremony took place at the close of the day’s business at AUSPACK PLUS.
In the 2013 edition of the awards, organised by the World Packaging Organisation, 159 winners from around the world received their trophies.
The awards this year had a total of 316 entries from 33 different countries. Beverages had 78 entries and 41 took a WorldStar; Electronics 18 with 11 winners; Food 42 winners from 81 entries; Health & Beauty 15 winners from 33 entries; Pharmaceutical & Medical received 24 entries and 11 took a WorldStar; and Other category had 35 winners from 69 entries.
Australia had a huge interest in this year’s awards. Melbourne's Outerspace Design led the Australian charge, winning three categories in this year's awards.
Outerspace's wins, for Hydralyte Sports in the Health and Beauty category, for Berri's Daily Juice on-the-go bottles in Beverages and Sprout mobile phone accessories in the Electronics category, follows its success last year at the awards when it won a WorldStar for its breakthrough design of Heinz's Golden Circle chilled juice 1.8-litre bottle in what was Australia's inaugural year at the prestigious international awards.
The Melbourne design house this year also shared the honours with local Coke bottler Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA), Poppet International and Webstercare as category winners.
CCA's Easy Crush bottle for Mount Franklin mineral water and Poppet International's innovative bottles for Bebi infant juice and water joined Outerspace as winners in the Beverages category, while Webstercare's Personal Medication Planner (PMP) was named a winner Medical and Pharmaceutical pack of the year category.
All the winning packs had already tasted success at last year's Packaging Council of Australia's Australian Packaging Design Awards, which had made them eligible for the WorldStar awards.
The awards are open only to organisations who have won in approved national competitions around the world.
A few special awards were presented later in the evening. In the Sustainability category, CCA’s Mount Franklin Easy Crush bottle was named the bronze winner, giving Australia yet another honour. The Infini Bottle by Nampak of the UK won silver, while gold went to Loop Pallet, by IPG of Sweden .
For the first time, WPO delivered awards for Marketing, with the inaugural gold award going to the J&B Twister pack, by the UK’s MW Creative.
The President's Award winners were recognised as follows: gold to Germany’s Wipak for TalkPack; silver to BossPack of South Korea for Mosspack; and bronze to Sankyu of Japan for its Folding Returnable Pallet for drums
The final award of the evening went to Australian packaging industry veteran, Harry Lovell, who was honoured for his decades of contribution to the packaging industry.
WPO president, Thomas Schneider, said: "Once again the WorldStar Ceremony brings together packaging leaders from all over the world for a singular purpose: to receive recognition from the most important packaging competition globally and confirm their packaging projects are making a difference for a better world."
The Outerspace team celebrate their three WorldStar Award wins. From left, Michael Grima, Sergei Plishka, Bryan Terry and Michael Denham.
