September 28, 2016
AICC members do many great things. AICC recognizes excellence each year through various competitions, scholarships, and awards.
Competitions
Innovator of the Year
The AICC–Board Converting News/Corrugated Today Innovator of the Year Competition is designed to recognize innovative solutions created by both AICC box plant and supplier members that enhance the efficiencies, productivity, product quality, and bottom-line profitability of the independent box plant.
Developed more than 20 years ago as a forum for boxmakers and suppliers to put forward their best innovations, the Innovator of the Year award has since evolved into a highly competitive arena that highlights the technological innovations of AICC members in production, material handling, manufacturing, training, and administration. Each year, the AICC Plant Innovations Committee holds a call for entries and, after reviewing the submissions received from AICC members, determines the finalist entries that are then voted on by AICC Annual Meeting attendees. Co-sponsored by Board Converting News, the competition alternates its focus among boxmakers, suppliers, and nonmachinery aspects of the converting industry.
An Innovator of the Year is awarded every year in the fall, in four rotating categories: Boxmakers, Nonmachinery, Machinery, and Information Technology and Training.
Join the AICC/TAPPI SuperCorrExpo® general session on Tuesday, October 18, at 8 a.m. in Orlando, Fla., to vote for this year’s winner in the Machinery category.
Package Design
The biennial AICC Independent Packaging Design Competition features corrugated, folding carton, and rigid box categories, providing a wider reach into the entire packaging market and a greater diversity of ideas. Independent box plants compete for first, second, and third place as well as honorable mention awards. Contestants also have the opportunity to win the coveted People’s Choice or take home the prestigious Judges’ Choice Awards.
Since 1981, in its packaging design competition, AICC has been proud to recognize, showcase, and reward independents who have met and exceeded their customers’ expectations of their packaging designs and displays.
The next Independent Packaging Design Competition will take place in the fall of 2017 at the Annual Meeting, to be held in Las Vegas in conjunction with PackExpo. Entry information will be available in early 2017.
Student Packaging Design Competition
The annual AICC Student Packaging Design Competition honors the best student designs entered in three distinct categories and allows AICC members a glimpse of what’s in store for the future of the corrugated packaging industry. Entry into the student competition provides students with the best opportunity to show off their talent and creativity to corrugated packaging and display professionals from around the world.
This year’s categories included:
Category One: Design to an Opportunity, PART I — Structural Design Challenge: Create a “March Madness Party Pack” to be on display at local retail stores to promote March Madness.
Category Two: Design to an Opportunity, PART II — Graphic Design Challenge: Create and design the graphics for your “Party Pack” from Part I of the Design to an Opportunity project.
Category Three: Corrugated as Art — Design a musical instrument of your choosing out of corrugated. The final product must be one of a kind and not commercially reproducible (no production run possibility).
Join the AICC/TAPPI SuperCorrExpo® general session on Tuesday, October 18, at 8 a.m. in Orlando, Fla., to congratulate this year’s winners.
Designers’ Lab Challenge
The Designers’ Lab Challenge, held biennially, gives designers the opportunity to learn new techniques in both structural and graphic design from experts in the field, and to share knowledge and experiences with peers. Participants are teamed up to work together to address a specific design problem and create a final design on-site. The designs are then judged by a panel of experts.
The challenge is open to corrugated, folding carton, and rigid box designers.
The next Designer’s Lab Challenge will take place during the 2017 AICC Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, September 25–27, 2017.
Operation Safe Shop
Operation Safe Shop is a biennial competition that reviews safety program effectiveness and excellence in several categories of member companies, and awards first-, second-, and third-place honors in each category that receives entries. The competition considers entries in the following categories:
- Corrugator Plants
- Sheet Suppliers
- Sheet Plants With Fewer Than 50 Employees
- Sheet Plants With More Than 50 Employees
- Folding Carton and Rigid Box Companies
The Operation Safe Shop Competition is more than just a compilation of man-hours and recordable injuries and illnesses. It is a companywide examination of such things as the company’s overall safety program; ownership commitment; the company’s safety practices and training procedures; safety awareness methods and incentives; maintenance programs and housekeeping; and other key elements of box plant safety.
The next Operation Safe Shop Competition will take place in 2018. Applications will open in January 2018.
Awards and Scholarships
Hall of Fame
The AICC and Paperboard Packaging Magazine Hall of Fame Award annually recognizes those who have made significant contributions to the independent sector of the paper and board packaging industry through active membership in AICC and broad-based involvement in the industry.
Join the AICC/TAPPI SuperCorrExpo® General Session on Tuesday, October 18, at 8 a.m. in Orlando, Fla., to honor this year’s winner.
Richard Troll Memorial Scholarship Fund
Each year, the trustees of the J. Richard Troll Memorial Scholarship Fund grant monetary scholarships to three undergraduate-level college or university students and one graduate-level student of exceptional quality who are majoring in packaging engineering or a related packaging field. The J. Richard Troll Memorial Scholarship Fund was established to honor the memory of the late J. Richard Troll, a founder of the Association of Independent Corrugated Converters and the International Corrugated Packaging Foundation.
Applications for the 2017 scholarship will open in early 2017.
AICC Region 6 Scholarship
Each year, members of the AICC Region 6 Board award a $2,000 scholarship to two deserving students whose parent, grandparent, or legal guardian is employed full time at an AICC member company in good standing in Region 6. A candidate must be a high school senior who is provisionally accepted as a full-time student into an undergraduate degree program by an accredited junior college or full four-year college/university, or a full-time student enrolled in undergraduate or graduate studies at an accredited junior college, college, or university.
Applications for the 2017 school year will open in May 2017. For more information, contact Nelva Walz, vice president business development, Elegant Packaging, at 708-652-3400 or nelva@elegantpackaging.com.
Virginia Humphrey is director of membership at AICC.
