Packaging manufacturers worried by 50% tariffs on steel, aluminum

Inspired by the Venus Flytrap plant, design students from Brobygrafiska claimed this year’s Gold Award in the Swedish leg of PIDA (Packaging Impact Design Award) with their inventive packaging solution for a set of drink mixer flavours called “Bite Botanical Bitters”. The team, comprising Herman Rydholm, Sofi Hansson and Julia Abrahamsson, impressed the jury with their deft use of “shape and colour that really catches our attention.” “We’re in shock!” says Herman Rydholm. “Very surprising. Actually, we started out with an idea of a pyramid shape, but it lacked colour so we thought we had to change. We happened to think of the Venus Flytrap and that was it. We got both colour and shape.” At PIDA, design students from universities and colleges from seven countries compete with their creative packaging designs. The competition is divided into five separate events: the USA, Sweden, France/Belgium, the UK, China, and Germany/Austria. The winners of the Gold Award at each event will meet in a Grand Finale at Luxe Pack Monaco in October.

During the night between September 5th and 6th, there was a fire in one of the buildings at BillerudKorsnäs’ production unit in Karlsborg. The production was stopped as a consequence of the fire but is now back to full speed after a successful work to make the unit ready for production. BillerudKorsnäs estimates that the impact from the fire on Q3 results will be approximately SEK 35 million. "Our teams and suppliers have made good efforts to overcome the consequences of the fire and we are glad that we can inform our customers of this quick start-up", says Per Lindberg, President and CEO of BillerudKorsnäs. The production unit in Karlsborg manufactures sack and kraft paper as well as market pulp for the Packaging Paper business area and has a production capacity of approximately 300,000 tonnes per year.

Back in the news after a self-imposed hiatus is one of the more intriguing sustainable-packaging initiatives of the past decade. That would be the paper bottle made by Ecologic Brands. Made popular in a number of categories—wine, pet food, protein powders, and laundry detergent to name a few—the container consists of a molded-pulp outer shell made from recycled corrugated and old newspapers that can be recycled up to seven times. An inner film polyethylene pouch with spout has been, until now, the inner component that comes in contact with the product, whether liquid, powder, or other. When compared with a rigid plastic container, the pouch reduces plastic use dramatically, says Ecologic. And because the shells can be nested and the pouch can be transported flat to an end user, one truckload of the packaging materials equals nine truckloads of rigid plastic containers.