Gold Pack Awards in South Africa

Our licensee in South Africa, Nampak Liquid Cartons, is celebrating its first-ever gold medal win at the ‘Oscars’ of the African packaging industry.

The winning carton, the Pure-Pak® carton in Natural Brown Board, scooped two gold medals awarded by the Institute of Packaging SA’s Gold Pack Awards. The Awards recognize outstanding design and technological developments.

Nampak was awarded its gold medals in the Non-Alcoholic Beverage Packaging category, and then also beat all paper entries in other categories to take the top award – the gold medal in the Paper Substrate Excellence category for the Best in Paper Packaging.

Retailer Spar launched its fresh milk in the new cartons in March 2020. “The result of a fantastic collaboration with Elopak, these are the first cartons in South Africa with Natural Brown Board and the first in the world in the larger 2-litre format,” explains Terry Van Der Walt, New Business Development Manager at Nampak SA.

Nampak is one of the oldest Pure-Pak® licensees and has been delivering products packaged in the cartons since “The carton is a leading package in South Africa for liquid foods and in the last decade has also been used for packing dry products such as rice, sugar, breakfast cereal and more recently coffee beans,” adds Terry.

“With a strong anti-plastic movement in South Africa and new regulations for packaging recycling, here is a much heavier focus on the sustainability values of the carton.” Therefore, the introduction of the Pure-Pak® carton with Natural Brown Board from Elopak has enabled Nampak to take packaging sustainability to a new level.

Nampak and Elopak beat key competitors to be the first in South Africa to launch cartons with Natural Brown Board. Both companies, together with board supplier Stora Enso, worked alongside Spar to get the message right for the launch.

“The new cartons have come at a time when the industry is stepping up the challenge with the first recycling mills recently opened in South Africa, and new End Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation driving development in the collection and recycling infrastructure. Nampak is leading the way on behalf of our customers and in 2020 was the first packaging company to join the PRO – ( Producer Responsibility Organization), Fibre Circle – which is facilitating the new regulations.” The new cartons hit the shelves in March 2020, and despite COVID restrictions have delivered growing milk sales versus the previous white cartons