The Paperboard Packaging Council (PPC) is once again holding its celebrated North American Paperboard Packaging Competition. Now in its 73rd year, the 2016 competition will recognize the folding carton industry’s most innovative and sustainable designs of the past year. PPC is currently accepting submissions, which will be judged by a panel of packaging experts this month at PPC headquarters in Springfield, MA. The winning cartons will be revealed at PPC’s 2016 Fall Meeting in San Antonio, TX.

The competition features three submission categories: General, Innovation (for new and unique solutions), and Eco (for cartons that replaced a less sustainable substrate or decreased waste). Within each category, judges will evaluate the cartons on a myriad of criteria including graphic/structural design, printing, branding, marketing and shelf differentiation, storage, distribution and warehouseing, line efficiencies, and sustainability. Each carton may be given a Gold, Silver or Boxmaker award, and the competition’s overall awards include Paperboard Package of the Year, Folding Carton of the Year, Rigid Box of the Year, the Innovation Award and the Eco Award.

“For more than 70 years, PPC’s North American Paperboard Packaging Competition has been the premiere showcase for our industry’s best work as well as emerging design trends and production techniques,” says Ben Markens, PPC president. “Considering all of the unique submissions we have already received, the 2016 competition will be no different.”

The 2016 panel of judges is comprised of packaging experts with a wide variety of backgrounds from technical converting to branding and marketing. The panel includes: Satkar Gidda, sales & marketing director at brand and packaging design consultancy SiebertHead, Joanne Grennille, senior packaging scientist at Mars Chocolate NA, Sandra A. Krasovec, packaging design professor at FIT, Bill Wynkoop, adjunct packaging professor at RIT, John Lyons III, former associate publisher of Package Design magazine, retired packaging executives Gary Miller and Richard DePaul, and Lynsie Gibson, packaging engineer at Performance Health/Hygenic Corp.

For more information on the Competition, visit paperbox.org/cc.