The packaging world has its own version of the Oscars. It's called the DuPonts. Short for the DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation, it's an international and independently judged competition to find the most ground-breaking ideas in packaging.
The DuPonts aren't just a food-packaging award — packaging for a variety of goods are included. But since the awards inception in 1986, food companies have been big winners.
It's the best form of flattery
Just last year, the Gold prize winner was the separable pouch that Nestle's Maggi brand uses for its marinades. It's pretty clear why the pouches won ... they have a sort of packaging genius about them. Each package has two distinct pouches that are easily torn apart. One, an infusion paste, is for the beginning of the cooking process. The second, a finishing sauce, is for the end. Combined they offer an easy way to engage in relatively complicated cooking.
It's the sort of packaging idea for which you can imagine loads of uses. And that can be a bit of a problem. Consider if you will, the fate of this year's Silver Award winner — Clear Lam Packaging Inc.
Clear Lam won a DuPont for its PrimaPak, a flexible, stackable sort of flip-top box that the company developed late in 2013. (Fisher Nuts became the first commercial user of the the packaging design.)
All was well and good until earlier this month when Clear Lam sued Frito-Lay, alleging the world's largest snack-chip company had stolen the PrimaPak idea for promotional boxes of Doritos.
As it turns out, the PrimaPak isn't the only DuPont award winner to find itself in the middle of a lawsuit. Heinz' Dip & Squeeze package won a Silver Award in 2011. But an inventor named Scott White said Heinz stole the idea after he pitched it to the company.
And back in 1992, a product called Forma-Pack Inc. won the Diamond Prize at DuPont for a six-top beverage carrier that prevented animal entanglement and was more sanitary.
Bur Forma-Pack wound up filing a lawsuit against ... DuPont! The Stockton, CA-based company claimed DuPont had promised to spend millions to further develop the product and the technology it used. For its part, DuPont denied the claims and said Forma-Pack's problems were the result of making a product that just didn't catch on.
Execution over innovation
And therein is one of the most interesting thing about the DuPonts: Products that don't catch on are pretty rare among the winners. And that's surprising. The awards are designed to recognize innovation. But as anyone in the food industry can tell you, having good execution is far more important than having a good idea. As it turns out, DuPont award winners tend to be pretty good at execution.
Consider just two of the of the award-winning products that have gone from innovative to industry standard over the 26 years of the award.
Amcor's No-Thaw cups — The single-serving cups for juices are ubiquitous in foodservice settings such as hospitals and grade schools.
And Kraft's pour-able dressings — Kraft has won 11 DuPonts over the years, but its first was in 1992 for the then-revolutionary idea of a stand-up glass bottle filled with salad dressing that you poured, rather than scooped with a spoon.
Of course, not every DuPont winner stands the test of time.
ConAgra has won five DuPonts over the years, but its first was in 1988 for something called a 3M Monitormark-Microrite microwave doneness indicator.
And truth be told, we have no memory of that thing, and have no earthly idea what it was.