2024 Excellence in Reusable Packaging Award Ceremony to Take Place November 5 at 4 pm at PACK EXPO International at McCormick Place, Chicago in the RPA Pavilion.
As a longtime judge of the Reusable Packaging Association‘s highly respected Excellence in Reusable Packaging Awards, one of my favorite tasks each summer is reading the submissions. This year was no exception, with another round of innovative solutions. Unfortunately, there can only be three winners.
The awards feature three brilliant submissions across three categories: Reusable System, Design Innovation, and Product Technology. The winners are Cummins with Surgere for Reusable System, ALPAL for Design Innovation, and Niagara Systems for Product Technology.
Cummins partnered with Surgere to implement a returnable container tracking solution across 30 facilities in North America. Utilizing Passive RFID technology, the system integrates nearly 300 RFID portals and handheld readers to ensure precise, real-time tracking of containers. This solution improves workflows, reduces container location time, and supports Cummins’ corporate sustainability goals, with data accuracy exceeding 95%
ALPAL teamed up with a leading manufacturer to redesign a bulk container that could collapse for efficient return transport while maintaining the strength to stack eight units high, optimizing storage space. The innovative 2-in-1 solution, combining a pallet and a container, incorporates the best of flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs) and intermediate bulk containers (IBCs). After securing design agency BPO, the year-long redesign process involved weekly collaboration, leading to the final design and the contracting of a mold maker to produce the new ALPAL product.
Niagara Systems ventured into automated pallet washing when a customer sought to replace their manual process with a solution capable of cleaning 1,000 pallets per hour. A dedicated team of engineers, machinists, welders, and fabricators worked through a seven-step design and build process, covering research, design, procurement, fabrication, assembly, testing, and implementation, to deliver the automated pallet washer.
Introduced more than a decade ago, the Excellence Award initiative maintains its steadfast momentum recognizing visionaries within the reusables industry. The prestigious awards identify primary (end) user companies and suppliers who increasingly find new opportunities to innovate and advance reusable packaging. An independent panel of judges assesses award submissions. They are scored based on narration of the reuse opportunity, demonstration of business or economic improvements, and quantification of environmental impacts.
Aside from myself, the expert judges for the 2024 awards included:
- Laszlo Horvath, associate professor and director, Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design, Virginia Tech
- Michelle Fay, program manager, StopWaste
- Ziynet Boz, assistant professor of Sustainable Food Systems Engineering, University of Florida
About the Excellence Awards
The RPA Excellence in Reusable Packaging Awards recognize companies and organizations that have developed and implemented innovative and measurable reusable packaging solutions in a business-to-business supply chain. The Reusable System Award recognizes primary (end) user companies and associated product suppliers that have developed and implemented measurable reusable packaging solutions in a business-to-business supply chain. The Design Innovation Award celebrates the commercial use of a cutting-edge product that benefits the market, and the Product Technology Award salutes the deployment of smart automated systems with reusable packaging.
Celebrating its 13th year, the award program honors the award recipients at an awards ceremony on November 5th at 4:00 pm, at the close of the RPA Learning Center at PACK EXPO International at McCormick Place in Chicago.
About the Reusable Packaging Association (RPA)
RPA is a non-profit trade organization that represents and promotes the common business interests of member suppliers and users of reusable packaging products and services. Through education and advocacy, RPA accelerates supply chain adoption and optimization of reusable packaging systems. For more information, visit the RPA website.
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Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.
