Design Competition for Valio Butter Package Won by a Dutch company

“The winning design is clear and functional while the detail serves consumers using the product in a variety of situations. The contributions have provided us with many great ideas for the future development of our packages,” says Valio Product Group Manager Marita Silvola.

26 June 2012 --- The international design competition arranged by Valio Ltd for the Valio Butter package introduced new kinds of concept for butter packaging. The winner of the competition organised in co-operation with Stora Enso and the European Packaging Design Association (EPDA) was a Dutch design office Vermeulen Brand. The victor’s name was published at the EPDA World Congress in Helsinki 15th June 2012. Valio arranged the competition to generate concepts for the future development of butter packages.

“We are very satisfied with the many different, fine and carefully thought out proposals we received,” says Vice President Marketing Emma Aer from Valio.

The participants were asked to design a new cardboard consumer package for Valio Butter and the jury found the contributions to be of a high standard. Finnish students performed very well in competition with known European design houses and two student contributions from Lahti Institute of Design received honourable mentions.

“The winning design is clear and functional while the detail serves consumers using the product in a variety of situations. The contributions have provided us with many great ideas for the future development of our packages,” says Valio Product Group Manager Marita Silvola.

The participants were asked to pay special attention to ease of use, and the employment of environmentally safe cardboard materials.

“Cardboard packages for food products offer almost limitless potential as a sustainable and environmentally friendly material, explains Sales Director Yrjö Aho from Stora Enso. Completing the competition successfully in such a short period of time shows how flexibly we have been able to implement our co-operation with Valio.”

We received many submissions from design offices based in ten European countries and Japan, while Finnish packaging design students participated in the competition alongside professional foreign designers.

“It was a really interesting challenge to implement the competition in tandem with internationally renowned partners such as Valio and Stora Enso. The fact that the brands are well known and appreciated was reflected in the high standard of contributions, which made the jury’s task extremely challenging,” says Renne Angelvuo, Board member of EPDA and Design Director of Win Win Branding Oy.

The EPDA World Congress in Helsinki attracted designers of known brands from Europe and Finland along with significant industrial packaging players to discuss the development of the industry and generate ideas for innovative solutions. This was the first time the Congress was held in Finland.