Inaugural AfriStar Awards presented

The AfriStar Awards are intended to showcase the best of the African packaging industry, with imported technology, components and constituents having to be declared in the entry process.

Packages entered to the AfriStar Awards program had to have been converted in an African country.

Anyone could enter a package, however, in all cases, the converter and the brand owner had to co-sign the entry form. A total of 30 entries from eight countries across Africa – South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Malawi – were received for the inaugural AfriStar Awards program. The AfriStar Awards ceremony was held in Nairobi, Kenya on September 10.

Categories for this first edition covered: Health, Beauty, Medical & Pharmaceutical; Food; Beverages; Household; Domestic Goods; Hardware; Appliances; Automotive Products; and Transit (secondary packaging & industrial, electronics and appliances).

Amongst the finalists and winners were: the Distell Richelieu Eiffel Tower Gift Pack, a robust, pyramid-shaped pack (emulating the Eiffel Tower) that encloses the bottle and can be packed flat for storage; a range of Ketepa Pride flavored tea packaging, featuring embossed text in distinctive hues to differentiate the packs; the Protector Plus Condoms Dispenser Family Pack entry, entered by Hunyani Paper & Packaging, which allows bundled packs of 30 condoms to be effectively displayed, separated only by dividers, for efficient space utilization in both the retail and wholesale environments; the Hello Kitty Ice-Cream Tub, printed with ‘ultra-low migration’ inks to conform to Nestlé’s food safety requirements and featuring an in-mold labelled overcap to optimize seal quality, and the Chick Boxes entry, as entered by TLL Printing & Packaging, which has been developed to help small poultry farm owners whose  small chicks were dying in transit either through suffocation or their heads protruding from the air holes. This entry was judged to be ‘practical packaging’ that has solved an industry problem.

Download the full 2014 AfriStar Awards brochure here.

Joseph Nyongesa, APO president, said: ‘Africa is a rising continent. We are certainly one of the continents that attract most the interest of companies nowadays. And we need to show these companies that the African packaging industry is rising and is being very well prepared to receive new products and retail chains.’