Avant-Garde awards design, material innovation and sustainability in packaging
Avant-Garde is the Packaging Première contest that selects and rewards the most innovative and sustainable packaging projects in three different categories: design, sustainability and innovative materials. It is in this last category that Materially, in the person of Anna Pellizzari and thanks to her recognized many years of experience in the world of materials, was directly involved as a member of the jury which evaluated the innovative characteristics of the various proposals. Innovation is meant here not so much, or not only, as mere performance, but as a timely and technologically advanced response to the stimuli coming from the market, users and institutions, therefore, as we will see, with a centrality of environmental impact issues.
During the awards ceremony, excellently conducted by Teresa Magretti, the first to be called on stage was the Design category, awarded by Elena Ornaghi of Veralab. The Korean project by Ungsam-Revation was the winner, a packaging for ginseng that combines papermold and sleeve to obtain a stylized but realistic representation of the mountains, through a design of great impact and refinement. The project was awarded for its ability to “tell a story and embellish the content through a single-material packaging, made of 100% paper, which reproduces the mountains from which the ginseng is extracted”, as mentioned in the jury’s motivatio
In the Innovative Materials category, the solution presented by Lamberti SpA proved to be the winner: it is Esacote® BIO BC 100, a 100% biobased coating based on cutin, a substance with water- and oil-repellent properties extracted from tomato skins using an innovative patented process. It is a solution that promptly responds to the needs of the Single Use Products Directive, providing high performance without the use of traditional plastic materials, valorising a waste material from the agri-food industry and industrially scaling the research work of an Italian green startup. The themes that Materially considered unique are therefore the combination of a bio-based solution from waste, high performance, and valorization of Italian research.
Federica Brumen of Conai awarded CM Cartotecnica Moderna and Icma Sartorial Paper for the Sustainability category with the Rinascimento project, a collaboration that aims to recover the paper and cardboard waste of Cartotecnica Moderna and transform it into non-deinked recycled paper, with a certified supply chain and yield close to 100%. Icma deals with the process of transforming scraps into new “reborn” paper, which is returned to CM for the creation of new products, thus closing the circle.
Finally, the Special Mention, also selected by Materially, went to Qwarzo SpA for its mineral-based coating which gives the paper hydro-oil-repellent properties without compromising its recyclability.
As Federica Brumen observed at the end of the ceremony, it is clear that the theme of reducing the impact of packaging is a constant in all the awarded solutions, not just in the Sustainability category: it is good news that gives us hope for the future.
