Welcome to the seventh annual UK Packaging Awards, the biggest and most prestigious awards ceremony for the packaging sector.

Last year’s event was a record breaker, with more than 620 people crowding the London Hilton on Park Lane to celebrate the best the industry has to offer in terms of business performance, personal achievement and, of course, packaging innovation and design.
The outside world took notice, too – the Awards were namechecked in a Sainsbury’s CSR report and were covered in numerous local and national media outlets.

But this year is set to be bigger and better than ever.

As you look through our website, you will see that we have added a number of new categories that, we feel, will help this event reflect better than ever the diverse and innovative world of UK packaging.

In the Performance Awards, we have added two categories: a ‘Rising Star’ award, which celebrates the huge contribution of a new generation of packaging people; and the ‘Contract Packer of the Year’ award, which focuses on an increasingly influential sector. We have also renamed the ‘Environmental Initiative of the Year’ as the ‘CSR Initiative of the Year’ to reflect the wider range of project companies undertake to contribute to the world around them.

In the Quality Awards, meanwhile, this year we will be recognising the importance of global supply chains into the UK packaging sector with the ‘International Sourcing’ category, for innovative packs made outside the UK but sold here. And we will celebrate the many wonderful inventions that have not yet made it to market in the ‘Best New Concept’ category.

It is anyone’s guess at this stage who will win in 2012. But I can’t wait to see this year’s crop of entries and to raise a glass to them, back at the London Hilton, on 14 November. I hope to see you there. And whatever category you are entering, good luck.

Josh Brooks is editor of Packaging News