Inspiring Australian designs leading the way VPDA- Let's Catch Up. #5
Cybertongue reduces food waste and improves safety, Worldstar global packaging awards showcases top packaging solutions, APPEX 2024, compostable coffee pucks, Bang Olufsens new hub compatibility
It’s Monday Everyone!
What a week it’s been with the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards, 2024 Worldstar Packaging Awards and the APPEX 2024 packaging convention. I hope your caffeinated and ready to chat!
Design Awards- 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards
Credit AKQA, NIKE
Last week saw some very interesting designs reviewed as part of the VPDA 2024 recognising leading design from 2023. What a spectacular evening that spanned Architectural Design, Communication Design, Design Strategy, Digital Design, Fashion Design, Product Design, Service Design and Student category. From digital AI envisioning of Serena Williams career to Athena’s Social Intelligence Dashboard that provides automatic alerts to bushfires found via social media. I recommend viewing the finalists as well as the overall category winners as its a wonderful plethora of Australian design solutions.
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Product Design- Award Winning CYBERTONGUE Improves Food Safety For Food Processors
Credit PPB Technology, Tricycle Developments, Xentronics
Recognised at last week's Victorian Premier’s Design CyberTongue is a rapid analysis device enabling laboratory quality results in minutes for both specialist operators and non specialist operators to use. This device gives food processors the ability to quickly analyse food quality at site for pathogens, allergens and toxins. This greatly reduces waste and improves food safety.
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Packaging Awards- 2024 Worldstar Packaging Awards
Credit Confoil &BASF
The 2024 Worldstar Global Packaging Awards has been inspiring to say the least! With submissions from across the globe we get to see leading packaging design solutions that are addressing serious challenges facing the industry. A large array of winners from compostable ovenable trays, carbon neutral beef packaging, wine protectors to better coffee cups and recycled paint containers.
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Events- APPEX 2024 Showcases Australian Packaging Industry
Credit Adam Norris
Last week’s APPEX 2024 convention was a spectacle of processing and packaging technology. Previously Auspack convention, this year’s event delivered on it’s promise of being Australia’s biggest packaging convention. With a host of technology and pack solutions on display the event provided a space for industry to connect and discuss the hottest topic: sustainability. This is the elephant in the room of packaging industry with many discussions on how to achieve this. Unfortunately we look to be failing APCO 2025 targets, but do not despair conversations from APCO and Government show to a tightening of regulation that will hopefully enforce a rapid adoption of sustainable materials and technologies in 2026. I will not lie that it sad to see industry inaction unless regulations are in place but understand they are frozen as competitors can undercut their sustainable solutions.
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Beverage- Compostable Coffee Pucks Are the Death Knell For Pods
Credit Keurig
It’s wonderful to see innovations in sustainability. Especially for coffee pods, with 2.25 billion cups of coffee being consumed per day. That’s a lot of coffee! Now I incentivise coffee drinking in this newsletter so I am so thrilled to showcase the Keurig coffee pucks that aim to replace plastic pod counterparts. The pucks are used similarly to pods in the loading of a machine to extract coffee, but then they can be disposed of in your local waste green bin rather than creating large amounts of waste plastic. The only addition to this is I wish they wouldn’t require a new machine, retrofitting this solution for existing pod machines is the right thing to do to reduce waste and throwaway of the other machines.
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Product Design- Bang Olufsens Backward Compatible Wireless Hub Turns Old Speakers Into Bluetooth Devices
Credit Bang Olufsen
Great to see more designs that incorporate backwards compatibility with older devices. This enables us to not dispose of older technologies and products which are part of our throwaway culture. Bang Olufsen’s new smart hub is capable of connecting to speakers that are 30 years old and converting them into smart devices that can stream music!
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Food- Marine Stewardship Council Awards John West Tuna Bowl
Credit John West
Good to see brands doing the right thing with John West being recognised as best responsible seafood brand. There are host of other businesses and brands recognised as part of the Marine Stewardship Council Awards for sustainable seafood.