Pro Carton Young Designer Award: shaping the future of packaging design
What will tomorrow’s packaging look like? The answer often begins with the Pro Carton Young Designers Award, where students showcase bold ideas that challenge conventions and push sustainable design forward. Supported by MM Board & Paper’s cartonboard, young creatives are given the chance to turn their concepts into real prototypes that inspire the packaging industry of the future.
Celebrating creative packaging and sustainable innovation
The Pro Carton Young Designers Award (PCYDA) has once again confirmed its place as Europe’s leading competition for students interested in packaging design. In 2025, the Awards Gala in Istanbul on 18 September brought together bright young talents from across the continent, celebrating innovation, creativity and the shared ambition to build a more sustainable future.
Focused entirely on cartonboard – a renewable, recyclable and biodegradable material – the award champions the next generation of designers who are shaping the fibre-based packaging industry. Their ideas combined aesthetic and functional brilliance with a strong commitment to reducing waste and advancing circularity.
As a proud sponsor, MM Board & Paper supported students by supplying cartonboard sheets for mock-ups, samples and prototypes. This material became the canvas for ground-breaking designs, many of which demonstrated how packaging can evolve to meet the needs of both consumers and the planet.
The winners were recognised across four categories: Creative Cartonboard Packaging | Food & Drink, Creative Cartonboard Packaging | All Other, the Sustainability Award, and the Public Award. Each category highlights a different dimension of innovation in fibre-based packaging. Let’s take a closer look at the winners!
Creative Cartonboard Packaging | Food & Drink
In this category, students reimagined food and beverage packaging using cartonboard. Their entries balanced functionality with aesthetics while highlighting cartonboard’s recyclability—giving consumers, quite literally, a taste of great design.
Barnabás created an innovative packaging design for a liqueur inspired by the Tyrolean Alps. The cartonboard gift box looks like a carved block of ice on the outside, while the bold red inside reflects the fiery taste of the drink. It also includes two shot glasses, blending creative packaging design with a functional, premium user experience.
Creative Cartonboard Packaging | All Other
Open to every sector beyond food, this category showcased cartonboard’s versatility in non-food packaging. Students tackled unresolved packaging challenges, designing fibre-based solutions that improved existing formats while driving innovation.
Jule and Meret created smart cartonboard packaging for period pads to improve menstrual hygiene. Their multifunctional format cleverly segregates used and new pads with a flip-mechanism and perforated flap dispensing system. It transforms conventional period product packaging into a sleek packaging solution that works in small bathroom spaces. With clear graphic design and careful use of materials, the concept shows how custom packaging can be both practical and more sustainable.
Sustainability Award
This category put the spotlight on ideas that reduce or replace plastic and other materials. Submissions demonstrated how cartonboard can help protect the environment and support to drive the shift toward a circular economy in packaging.
Sebastian’s design reimagines cosmetics packaging by eliminating plastic altogether. The minimalist cartonboard format uses far less material than standard containers, decreasing manufacturing time and boosting efficiency. With refined branding and minimal visual language, Felicia showcases how premium aesthetics and environmental consciousness can coexist. This award-winning concept highlights how more sustainable packaging solutions can support the circular economy and showcase the potential of fibre-based innovation.
Public Award
The only category decided by popular vote, the Public Award gave audiences the power to choose their favourite design. All shortlisted concepts were opened for voting, allowing the public to play a direct role in celebrating creativity and sustainable thinking.
Chosen by popular vote, Fold’n’Hold is a piece of innovative packaging that is both clever and practical. The lightweight carrier folds flat when not in use, yet can hold up to 40 times its own weight. Ideal for holding multiple drinks, it adapts to coffee chains, festivals or branded promotions and is fully customisable in look and feel. A perfect example of how cartonboard can deliver both strength and design flexibility in real-world use.
Winning the PCYDA is just the beginning. The award connects young designers directly with MM Group, offering training days at the company’s Vienna headquarters and MM Packaging plant, where they gain first-hand insight into cartonboard production and innovation. MM is committed to supporting the industry’s young innovators and creatives, recognising them as the individuals who will Think next and shape tomorrow’s packaging. MM will remain committed to sponsoring and hosting the winners of the Pro Carton Young Designer Awards to training.
MM’s leadership understands that this hands-on experience facilitates exchanges between the winners and established industry insiders along with international media visibility from which both sides benefit. This combination gives new and long-time participants the knowledge, networks and practical understanding needed to refine concepts and bring them closer to market trends. In this way, the award not only honours creativity, but also actively supports the development of packaging solutions that will shape a more sustainable future.
