For the first time there will be a total European winner of the packaging design competition PIDA. On 30 September the four finalists from Sweden, the UK, Germany and France will compete for the title Grand Finale winner of PIDA 2019. The festive award ceremony will be held at 15.00 at the BillerudKorsnäs exhibition stand at the world’s leading trade show for creative luxury packaging – Luxe Pack Monaco.

“With PIDA we want to shine light on the young talents who will become tomorrow’s packaging designers and bring them together with industry professionals. For the event at Luxe Pack, we have four strong contestants for the European title,” says Anders Gathu, Marketing Manager at BillerudKorsnäs.

The international competition PIDA is arranged by BillerudKorsnäs and is carried out in collaboration with leading universities and colleges in Sweden, the UK, France and Germany. This year’s brief was “Bring the future” and with 36 nominated entries, it has been a highly competitive challenge. Now it’s time to elect the total winner of PIDA 2019. The four nominated designs for the Grand Finale are all winners from the PIDA-events earlier this year in Sweden, the UK and France.

The winner will be elected by a jury comprising a mix of industry professionals – designers, converters, brand owners and other specialists – all of whom have been on the jury at one of the previous PIDA-events this year. The four nominated design projects are:

• Bois underwear – by Alicia Lundgren, Natasha Bosnjak and Christian Koch from Nackademin.
• Ekitai Sake – by Chao-Lun Cheng, Will Sutton and Jiaming Gong from Sheffield Hallam University.
• Save the bees – by Daniela Betz and Sophia Huber from Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart.
• Layers and Care - by Alexie Rossato, Robin Rousselle and Charlène Raymond from IUT of Reims.

Creating packaging concept for the future

This year’s challenge was to develop a sustainable packaging concept for the year 2030. During the events in Sweden, the UK and France, the jury have looked at the innovation, sustainability, user-friendliness, concept and communication of the contributions. The participating students have presented creative and fun ideas on how to package clothes, beauty products and confectionery in a more environmentally friendly way.

“We’ve seen many innovative and creative takes on the brief, and we are excited to announce a Grand Finale-winner in Monaco. More and more consumers wish to get involved and contribute to a sustainable future and that increases the demand for climate-smart packaging. A growing trend is to replace plastic with renewable materials and that has really made a mark on PIDA this year, making the competition all the more relevant,” says Sophie Lindhe, Brand Project Coordinator at BillerudKorsnäs.

Taking the competition to the next level

For 15 years running, BillerudKorsnäs has arranged the international packaging design competition PIDA for European design students. The competition aims to demonstrate the importance of packaging to products, brands and the environment.

“We have arranged PIDA for many years, as a way of driving the development of packaging design and knitting the packaging community tighter together. And with a Grand Finale at Luxe Pack in Monaco we want to take the competition to a new level. This way we can give the students an even greater incentive and introduce their design projects to a wider audience,” says Anders Gathu.