PIDA 2023: Health, Beauty and Wellness Packaging Design of the Year

The Health, Beauty and Wellness Packaging Design of the Year award recognises organisations that have designed innovative packaging and/or materials, within cosmetics, toiletries, personal hygiene, supplements, vitamins, perfumes, hair body and oral care. This award also covers packaging of all medicines including over the counter medicines, medical equipment packaging.

"With wellness at is core, this is a category that is closely linked to lifestyle trends, with product choices often influenced by consumers’ values on matters environmental, social and ethical," said PKN managing editor & publisher Lindy Hughson, who was co-host of the 2023 PIDA awards.

"It’s a category where expectations around the brand experience and packaging aesthetics are high, but at the same time consumers will reward brands who take a stand on sustainability, with recyclable, refillable and reusable criteria strongly influencing the purchasing decision."

And the winners are...

At the 2023 Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design Awards (PIDA), the Bronze winner was BioShield by Caps & Closures , while the Silver winner was Habitat Shipper Box by Production Packaging Innovations .

Topping the category with the Gold was KOi refillable foaming handwash starter kit and 4-pack refillable handwash tablets by Coles Group .

About the Gold winner:

This entirely new concept for the KOi brand is the first step towards a reuse model within the Coles Own Brand health and beauty category.

The Handwash Tablets are Australian made, not tested on animals, vegan friendly, and contain no parabens, sulphates, artificial colours or fragrances. The KOi Invigorating Foaming Hand Wash Tablets incorporate a 'naturally derived' formula in an exclusive tablet format for the KOi brand.

The company explains that the customer only has to purchase one refillable bottle and then top up their handwash with the individual tablets. This reduces the use of single-use plastic bottles. The KOi refillable tablets (4-pack) provide approximately

800ml of product when mixed with water, compared to a standard 500ml liquid hand wash bottle (based on purchasing an existing KOi 500ml handwash.)

The primary packaging for the Starter Kit includes a HDPE bottle made from 30 per cent post-consumer recycled content, and a lightweight cardboard tag. To reduce excess packaging, the two tablets included in the Starter Kit are placed inside the bottle without packaging. The Refill Tablets are wrapped in a polypropylene (PP) wrap and outer cardboard box.

The refillable tablet packaging is smaller in size and approximately 85 per cent lighter in weight than a traditional single-use handwash bottle. This has reduced the overall pallet weight by 47 per cent and increased the quantity of cartons per pallet by 38 per cent.

The Handwash Starter Kit Bottle clearly outlines to customers the sustainability benefits including a ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ label on front of pack, the ‘Australian made’ logo on back of pack, and the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) on back of pack to help customers recycle the cardboard tag correctly.