Paperboard Innovation Shines with Double AmeriStar Awards Success 

Hosted by the Institute of Packaging Professionals, the AmeriStar Awards celebrate outstanding achievements in packaging design, sustainability and innovation. The annual competition recognizes packaging solutions across a wide range of categories, spotlighting designs that solve real market challenges through strong functionality, creativity, performance and consumer appeal. The awards are widely regarded as a showcase for packaging that pushes the industry forward, from material efficiency and recyclability to enhanced user experience and brand impact.

The double win highlights two very different packaging innovations — from a minimal-material beverage multipack designed to eliminate plastic and enhance consumer convenience, to a premium carton that elevates the coffee consumer experience.

EnviroClip™ Beam for Harry Brompton’s Peach Iced Tea

The EnviroClip™ Beam multipack created in partnership with Tudor Drinks for their Harry Brompton’s Peach Iced Tea helped the independent beverage brand move beyond single bottles and into a retail-ready four-pack format.

The pack uses a glue-free paperboard clip structure to securely hold four 500ml PET bottles. Instead of relying on adhesives, the design uses engineered folds and locking features to create dependable bottle retention with a minimum of material compared with other multipack formats.

The result is a secondary packaging format that supports both commercial growth and a more circular packaging approach. Key benefits include:

Keurig Coffee Collective

The new packaging developed for Keurig Dr Pepper’s K-Cup pod range, Keurig Coffee Collective, is a premium paperboard carton.

The brief was to deliver a pack that looked and felt more like a rigid box than a conventional folding carton, while retaining the efficiency, recyclability and commercial practicality of paperboard. Graphic Packaging translated that ambition into a two-piece tray-and-lid carton with a clean exterior, refined “finished edge” appearance and carefully choreographed opening experience.

Key benefits include:

The Keurig Coffee Collective carton shows how paperboard packaging can deliver more than containment. By combining premium aesthetics, intuitive interaction, product protection and efficient manufacturability, the carton helps elevate the brand experience while maintaining a household-recyclable paperboard format.

“These AmeriStar wins reflect what we aim to do every day: create packaging that is more circular, more functional and more convenient than the alternatives it replaces. Both projects show the value of close customer partnership and a shared commitment to innovation — helping Tudor Drinks move Harry Brompton’s Peach Iced Tea into recyclable multipacks with strong shelf impact, and giving Keurig’s Coffee Collective range a premium feel and an elevated consumer experience.

“My congratulations go out to both customers on these well-deserved recognitions, which reflect their commitment to collaboration, innovation and bringing more effective packaging solutions to market.”

Carlos Carrillo Lugo, Vice President of Innovation, Graphic Packaging

Packaging Innovation with Real-World Impact

The two wins reinforce Graphic Packaging’s ability to transform customer briefs into award-winning packaging solutions — combining structural design, material expertise and commercial practicality to create packs that solve category challenges, support more circular outcomes and enhance the way consumers interact with products.

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* Directional cradle to grave carbon footprint includes board type and weight with emission factors based on supplier primary data following CEPI 10 toes methodology (2024), data for conversion based on average scope 1 and 2 emissions from all Graphic Packaging converting sites in the region (as calculated by limited independent third‑party assurance in accordance with ISAE 3000 and 3410, 2024), data for ink, varnish and adhesive from industry averages. Sheet waste generated during conversion is included. Inbound and outbound transport is excluded for the two compared cases. In the case of the PE shrink film, Gabi LCA Packaging Calculator (2024 Sphera database) was used and excludes any converting waste and any additional materials used in the PE packaging, e.g., printing inks, labels, etc. The model uses industry average data and is consistent with international standards.