Packaging

Graham Packaging Wins Two Prestigious WorldStar Awards in International Competition

Friday 18. January 2008 - The World Packaging Organisation (WPO), an international packaging federation headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, has chosen two beverage containers developed by Graham Packaging Company, L.P., to receive 2007 WorldStar Awards. The prestigious awards are given for superior performance and innovative design.

Graham Packaging won for a rectangular 64-ounce PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic apple juice bottle produced for Tree Top, Inc., and for a redesigned and improved PET plastic version of S. Martinelli & Company’s trademark 10-ounce apple-shaped glass juice bottle.

Both bottles won AmeriStar Awards last year. Only products that have won recognition in national packaging competitions are eligible for WorldStar Awards.

“Our bottles were chosen from among 300 global entries,” said Mark Leiden, Graham Packaging’s vice president for global marketing, strategic planning, and investor relations, “and this marks the 10th year in a row that Graham Packaging has captured either domestic or international packaging awards.”

The WPO pointed out that the Tree Top juice bottle was “developed and commercialized in record time”; that its cube efficiency increased shelf space utilization “by over 25 percent” and “reduced secondary packaging, shipping, and storage costs”; and that its “35-plus percent top load improvement resulted in significant gram weight reduction.”

The WPO described the Martinelli’s 10-ounce apple juice container as the “first successfully implemented liquid-nitrogen-dosed hot-fill narrow-neck beverage bottle.” It said the container was “a breakthrough for an industry seeking panel-less, lightweight hot-fill bottles [and] broadened the scope of design options permitting replication of an apple-shaped bottle, formerly in glass.”