Smurfit Kappa win top European innovation award from Nestlé

Smurfit Kappa was this week awarded the European Innovation Recognition Award for outstanding innovation proposals by Nestlé, the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company.

The award is given for outstanding innovation proposals across Europe and is judged by internal teams at Nestlé on the basis of a series of solutions demonstrating innovation, proactivity and practicality.

The awards mark a year of innovation at Smurfit Kappa. In June 2014, the company launched its new global brand strategy ‘Open the future’, designed to deliver customer growth through insights and innovation and to develop packaging solutions which drive business success.

In April 2015, Smurfit Kappa launched its industry-leading Global Experience Centre, the flagship hub of a global network which harnesses local expertise to develop packaging solutions together with customers to maximise their business success. Based in Schiphol, Amsterdam, it is the largest paper-based packaging experience centre in the world. 

The centre was launched at Smurfit Kappa’s annual Innovation Event, which also saw the unveiling of Shelf Smart, a new concept to help customers like Nestlé develop the optimum shopper marketing solution in a risk-free environment, helping improve customers’ brand performance at the point-of-purchase.

Mike, Drummond, VP Pan European Sales at Smurfit Kappa, says:  “We are delighted to be recognised in this way by one of our most important customers with whom we have built genuine strategic engagement to deliver value across critical aspects of its business.  It’s a perfect example of our ‘Open the future’ strategy in action, combining real insight, true innovation and operational excellence to create opportunities for our customers and their brands. It’s a real testament not only to our own teams, from innovation to design to logistics, but more importantly the team at Nestlé who have constantly embraced new thinking, ideas and innovations as we have built our partnership.”