iF Design Award 2024 for innovative beer packaging

Karl Knauer KG from Biberach in Baden was awarded the iF Design Award Gold, one of the most important design awards in the world, in Berlin on 29 April 2024. This year, the packaging experts from the Black Forest impressed the 132-member jury with their exclusive packaging for premium beer brand Stella Artois. Judges justified the award stating that the high-quality (closed) box, which contains twelve 0.33 litre bottles from the ABInBev brewery group, is “perhaps the greatest innovation in beverage packaging since the six-pack”.

Eye-catching design

Like six-packs, the Stella Artois packaging is made entirely from cardboard, and is therefore produced from sustainable material that can easily be recycled in any paper bin. With its rounded corners and elaborate finish, the new, elegant packaging shows at a glance that it contains something very special, making it the perfect match for premium brands. Once off the shelf, the carton reveals a second, highly innovative detail, for which the packaging developers at Karl Knauer have already been honoured with the German Design Award 2024: the telescopic handle, which does not require any plastic reinforcing straps and enables easy and convenient grasping and transport. The packaging can also be easily divided into two halves along a 360-degree perforation, and the lower part can be transformed into a tray in an instant by sliding the integrated side flaps inwards.

This was the 9th time that Karl Knauer, a company of long-standing tradition, has received the coveted iF Award. This company from the Black Forest is now a regular at the awards ceremony, where only 75 of the almost 11,000 competition entries were honoured with a gold award.

About the Karl Knauer Group

The core competences of the Karl Knauer Group are innovative packaging, promotional materials and gift packaging made of cardboard, corrugated cardboard and paper, as well as mechanical engineering. With two locations: in Germany (Biberach) and Poland (Pniewy), the company is one of the leading suppliers in the packaging sector. In dialogue with its customers, the company develops designs that meet all packaging requirements – from protection and safety to attractive presentation at the POS. Karl Knauer offers specialised programmes with state-of-the-art packaging technologies for seven areas of industry expertise. In addition, the company is working flat out on innovations for the packaging requirements of the future. Be it in the areas of smart packaging, convenience, product safety, anti-counterfeiting, finishing technologies or efficiency and sustainability.

Picture above: Collective joy at the award ceremony: (top) Hubert Wernet, Head of Innovation, (bottom left) Commercial Director Marco Manna, (centre) Frederik Zecheus, Key Account Manager Packaging, (left) Luisa Sepp, Marketing. Source: Karl Knauer KG