Page 60 - Packaging News Magazine Nov-Dec 2018

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HEADLINE MAKERS
The news year in a wrap
There’s never a dull moment in the dynamic Australasian packaging industry, with M&A activity, leadership changes and product innovation keeping our news desk busy. PKN brings you the highlights.
Sealed Air and Pact Group each took home an award in Packaging Materials and Com- ponents. Australia’s eight awards put it behind the top three countries, with Japan taking the most at 26, followed by India and China.
Michael Zacka took over the presidency of Amcor Flexibles Asia-Pacific. Zacka had joined Amcor in July 2017 after 20 years with Tetra Pak, and served as chief commercial officer until he stepped into Westerbeek’s va- cated position. Zacka
brought significant experi- ence in food and packaging to the president’s desk, hav- ing led Tetra Pak business- es around the world as head of South Asia, East Asia, and Oceania.
Simply Cups program, to roll out special re- cycling collection bins for its takeaway cof- fee and Slurpee cups in 200 stores and 50 other locations such as universities and construction sites. Sustainable packaging manufacturer BioPak, meanwhile, launched Australia’s first comprehensive compost- ing service for food packaging including paper coffee cups.
OJANUARY/FEBRUARY
N THE COVER: PKN signed on as a gold partner for the Australian Institute of Packaging’s National Conference, themed around Packaging Globalisa- tion. It would go ahead in Surfers Paradise in May, with representa- tives from more than 25 countries at- tending, and included the World
Packaging Organisation’s 100th board meeting. A gala presentation dinner com- bined the WorldStar Packaging Awards and the 2018 Packaging and Processing In- novation and Design Awards for the ANZ region.
Australian companies cleaned up in the 2018 WorldStars, with eight wins in total. Woolpack Australia took three for its
Woolcool concept, in the categories of Food, Transit, and Packaging Materials and Components; SPC and Plantic each picked up one in the Food category; CHEP won in Beverages; and
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November-December 2018
In a $142 million deal, Pact Group expanded its footprint in Asia, purchasing parts of Clo- sure Systems International (CSI) and Graham
Packaging Company (GPC) from Reynolds Packaging. The deal quadrupled the size of Pact’s Asian business from $50m to $200m, and allowed the com- pany to increase its presence in Asian markets.
Woolworths became the first supermarket to adopt the new Australasian Recycling Label across its own-brand product range. Developed by Planet Ark, the label high- lights what needs to be done to ensure the right elements of each piece of packaging end up in recycling, and was developed in response to research indicating customer uncertainty as to which packaging could and could not be recycled.
The supermarket also began a re- duction of plas- tics and pack- aging for fruit and vegetables, with the aim of re- moving 150 tonnes of plastic packag- ing per year.
Simplot became Australia’s first brand owner to see five employees attain the Certi- fied Packaging Professional qualification, which the AIP describes as a must-have rec- ognition of industry proficiency for packag- ing professionals around the world. Jason Goode, Manh Tran, Liz Matthews, Ralph Moyle, and Roger Cornelius all earned the certification together.
Treasury Wine Estates teamed up with Tactic, an app company, for an augmented reality campaign featuring its 19 Crimes wine brand, which drew on Australia’s his- tory as a British penal colony. When acti- vated via a smartphone, the animated char- acters on the wine labels spoke to the viewer to give voice and vision to the true stories of Australian convicts-turned-colo- nists. As of February 2018, the app had been downloaded more than 800,000 times around the world, and opened three mil- lion times.
The Australian Government gave the AIP a thumbs-up for its Save Food Packaging Award at the launch of the National Food Waste Strategy, which aims to halve Austra- lia’s food waste by 2030. Australian con- sumers throw away about 3.1 million tonnes of edible food annually, with another 2.2 million tonnes disposed by the commercial and industrial sectors, at a cost of around $20 billion per year. It was agreed that an in- tegrated approach to food waste is needed, with packaging playing an important role.
Sustainability was also on the minds of compa- nies such as 7-Eleven and BioPak, with each trying to reduce the amount of coffee cups sent to landfill. 7-Eleven joined forces with Close the Loop, which runs the