Students · October 30, 2025
Packaging Students Win National Design Challenge With an All-Paper Shipper for Glass Jars
Four students beat 30 other teams with a box that got six jars of honey through a ten-drop test without foam, plastic or a single broken jar.
A team of four packaging students took first place in the Midcontinent Packaging Educators’ Student Design Challenge, finishing ahead of 30 other teams from across the region with a one-piece corrugated shipper for six glass jars of honey.
This year’s brief came from a small producer: Millrace Honey Co., a Porter County apiary that sells about 4,000 jars a year online and has been losing roughly one shipment in twenty to breakage. Teams had to design a shipper that used no foam or plastic, could be assembled by one person without tape, and survived a ten-drop sequence from 30 inches onto concrete.
The Porter design folds from a single die-cut sheet into a box with built-in corrugated cradles that hold each jar by its shoulders rather than its base, so the jars never touch each other or the floor of the box. In judging, it came through all ten drops with no breaks and assembled in 41 seconds — the fastest of any finalist.
“Our first prototype was beautiful and broke four jars on the second drop. Prototype eleven was ugly and broke none. We submitted prototype fourteen, which is somewhere in between.”
— Kaylee Brekke, a junior in packaging from Cedar Bluff and the team’s lead
The rest of the team: Tomas Vue, a senior from Lake City; Jonah Pettis, a junior from Founders Triangle; and Anika Rao, a sophomore from the Cities. Their adviser was Malik Devereaux, professor of practice in distribution packaging and testing, who said the team ran more than 300 drops in the program’s test lab over six weeks, mostly in the evenings.
The prize is $2,500, which the team voted to split between the student packaging society and next year’s travel fund. Millrace Honey has asked to buy the design, and the team is working with the Center for Packaging Innovation on a short production run in time for the holiday shipping season.
Students interested in the major can see the four-year sequence on the packaging technology degree plan; the design challenge is open to any student in a packaging course.
Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. The design challenge, the honey company, the students and their prize are invented, and no real competition or business is described here.