Programme 2020

Tony Waite is Sales Director Engineering at Tata Steel Europe and the current President of APEAL, the Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging. He joined Tata Steel in 1999 and has held a number of commercial roles within the organisation looking after Original Equipment Manufacturers from Industrial Packaging, Radiators, Domestic Appliances and Automotive tiers. Prior to his current role, he was Regional Head for EIMEA based out of Dubai where he looked after Tata Steel operations in the region and was responsible for all the sales of products into the region from both the European and Indian operations. He holds a BSc in Technology and Management, as well as an MBA from the University of Warwick in the U.K.

Ilkka Harju, Packaging Design Director, is leading the Metsä Board’s packaging design team responsible for the European and Asian markets. Before joining Metsä Board in 2018, he was responsible for packaging design and innovation needs for various companies. Harju is renowned for pushing design boundaries by working collaboratively with other designers and technology experts. He constantly advocates the role of responsible design, technology and renewable raw materials as a tool for a healthier environment. In 2017 Harju received a Worldstar Award for his jewelry packaging design.

Luis Carlos Chacón leads the BusinessCase team, a Boutique-Global-Firm that works with multinational FMCG's identifying emerging and future business opportunities. Also, has been a columnist for Forbes Latin America for several years, and currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in Global Business at the University of Oxford (where previously graduated in Strategy and Innovation), his educational background also includes studies at Stanford, The University of Manchester, and Houston University. In business, he has worked for more than eighteen years for the global and regional operations of FMCG’s such as The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive, Diageo, Kellogg’s, Unilever, AB InBev among many others. Global traveller, eternal student, avant-garde thinker, business consultant, writer, and researcher, related to topics such as economics, storytelling, investment, retail, futures, semiotics, creativity, business competitive, globalization strategy, design thinking and behavioural sciences.

Andrew is passionate about supporting sustainable livelihoods and reducing plastic pollution. Andrew has co-founded three award winning social enterprises in the field of waste management. He has worked in slums of South America, India and Indonesia to strengthen the informal recycling economy. As the CEO of Plastics for Change his current work is focused on applying mobile technology to create ethical recycling supply chains for the urban poor in developing regions, while catalyzing the industry to make a profitable transition towards to use of recycled plastic.

Onur started his career in Infotron A.Ş. as a part time Product Designer in 2007, while he was a senior student at Istanbul Technical University Industrial Product Design Department. After graduating in 2008, He joined the Arçelik Industrial Design Team as an Industrial Designer. He had the opportunity to experience many white goods and small home appliance design processes produced for global and local markets. While continuing his design studies under Arçelik, he was promoted in 2019 and became the head of the Graphic design & Product Communication Team. He is managing all Graphic Design & Product Communication activities for group brands (Arçelik, Beko, Grundig, Blomberg, Elektrabregenz, Arctic, Defy, Dawlence, Flavel, Leisure, Singer and Altus) and leading design team for the study of product serigraphies, graphic user interfaces (GUI), packagings and user manuals.

Erika Ollen’s experience ranges from strategic marketing to brand consulting and design, always for the food related industries and very often with a health/nutritional and/or educational focus. Erika is a skilled chef with insights in product development and communication. She has more often than not ran her own projects and initiatives. For the past four years she has been part of running the innovative beverage company Caliente Beverages, being head of Marketing. Their drink range has received great international recognition, incl. “Best New Adult Drink” at World Beverage Innovation Awards. Extensive dialogue with the market made the team identify the gap for NA spirits early on, thus developing Gnista – the first non alcoholic spirit truly resembling a fine spirit. Gnista’s first flavour, Floral Wormwood, was launched Autumn 2019.

Lindsey McCoy has a master’s degree from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs and spent 10 years running environmental education nonprofits in The Bahamas - islands that are overwhelmingly full of single-use plastic. After her return to the United States, she and her sister co-founded Plaine Products in February, 2017 in order to help minimize single-use plastic and reduce waste in bathrooms across the country. Plaine Products offers premium personal care products in uniquely sustainable packaging: aluminum bottles that can be returned (for free), refilled and reused. Plaine Products has already diverted over 200,000 plastic bottles from landfills to date. Get more tips about reducing the plastic in your life by following Plaine Products on social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Pinterest

Matt Samra is the co-owner and co-founder of Buddy Buddy - a premium nut butter atelier, coffeebar and eatery located in Brussels, Belgium. Before venturing into entrepreneurship, Matt was a brand communications and public relations consultant based in London. He acquired a knack for intercultural communications having previously worked in roles across New Zealand, India and Japan.

Ms. Annika Sundell, Lic. (Tech), EVP-Innovation and Business Development at Walki Group, has a long experience of managing complex R&D projects and scale up activities within the packaging industry. She and her team are currently engaged in both early stage innovations as well as more mature material and technology developments covering several levels of sustainable packaging.

Gaurav leads the packaging engineering function at Blue Apron and is responsible for operational excellence, engineering, design, R&D, validation, and implementation of all packaging. Gaurav oversees the development and testing of new packaging solutions including efforts to implement new sustainable materials in the Blue Apron supply chain. He brings over 15 years of packaging & engineering experience and has previously worked at Chiquita, Johnson & Johnson, and Genentech.

Thomas Mueller-Kirschbaum is an experienced executive with more than thirty years of expertise in managing big and global organizations. He studied physics, chemistry and environmental technology before he joined Henkel in 1989. For more than twenty years he led the global research and development of the laundry & home care division. From 2005 to 2014 he was responsible for the global production and supply chain including about ten thousand people at more than forty operational sites around the globe. Currently, he is coordinating innovation and sustainability across all three business divisions. Since 2013 Thomas is the Co-Chair of Henkel´s Sustainability Council and in this role responsible for the continuous strategy adaptation and strategy execution. Since 2020 he acts as a self-employed person as member of supervisory boards, scientific advisor and consultant for companies from various industries. His specific expertise are creative, workable and efficient solutions for the optimization of research and development, innovation and technology, production and supply chain as well as solutions for all aspects of sustainability from strategy to implementation with focus on sustainable packaging, circular economy and a climate neutral value chain. Thomas teaches global innovation and technology management at the Niederrhein University of Applied Science at Krefeld, Germany since 2003.

Anthony Rossi is the VP, Global Business Development for Loop (TerraCycle company), a global platform that enables consumer product companies and retailers to shift from a disposable supply chain to a durable one. Anthony has been with Loop since its inception and with Loop’s parent company, TerraCycle, since 2012. Anthony and his team are the first point of contact with brands and retailers interested in partnering with Loop and Anthony works with these stakeholders to get their products and services into the Loop platform. Before joining Loop, Anthony was the VP, Global Business Development for TerraCycle supporting the company’s growth in 21 markets around the world. Prior to joining TerraCycle, Anthony earned his business development stripes working in Toronto, Dijon, Budapest, and Vienna for some of the world’s largest professional service firms and financial institutions.

Mr. Ashwani Kumar is currently Chief Technologist for Design & Packaging for India’s leading consumer goods company ITC Limited. He has over 29 years of in-depth experience in the area of Design, Packaging, Materials and related Machinery. His key competency is in putting together Design Strategy and ensuring an end to end solution working with a large cross functional team. He has been the chairman of the AsiaPack Summit for last three consecutive years. A key expert and with a flair for speaking, he has been a speaker at various international forums in the area of Packaging and Graphics Design. For the past several years, he has been the keynote speaker at the prestigious EuroPack Summit at Cannes and Monaco. He has also been a speaker at the International Holographic Conference, World Packaging Summit etc. His Contribution has also been in terms of a several write ups for ‘The Economic Times’ wherein he has enunciated theories and perspectives related to Design, the ‘T’ principle being one of them. He has been a member of the prestigious ‘India Design Council’ and has been contributing in his various capacities for Design propagation. An avid traveller and a keen photographer, Mr Kumar is one of the first in the country to start Nordic walking and has been propagating the benefits in his own way. Mr. Kumar’s mantra “Nothing is impossible”.

Marius finds his career background in Israel in the Home Audio industry. He witnessed first hand the market transformation to personal audio products and the way in which this shifted the industry and the brands that grew from it. After moving to the food and beverage industry, he has been inspired by the changes he has witnessed in consumer behaviour, which now leans towards healthier and more environmentally friendly choices. He saw this as an opportunity fir new companies to enter the global beverage market. At Birstona Mineral Water Company he works hard to achieve healthy and sustainable products, based on the highest quality water resources and advanced technology, with a view to becoming a global player in the industry.

Kati Randell (M.Sc., Food Science) has worked 25 years in the field of packaging research and development. She’s done research on the various packaging technologies and quality of packaging materials at the Technical Research Centre of Finland for four years. Thereafter Randell worked both at Valio (no 1 dairy company of Finland) and at Fazer (no 1 confectionery company of Finland) for ten years as Packaging Development Manager. At Paulig, she leads the packaging development for coffee and drinks. Her passion is to combine in the best and most sustainable way the various demands packaging has to fulfil with the added value it can offer. She enjoys working closely with many people internally and externally. Randell takes part in many national collaborative organisations in the packaging sector, like the board of the Finnish Packaging Association.

Nikhil is the Co-Founder and COO of MIT spinoff Graviky Labs Inc. Graviky is currently actively capturing air pollution and recycling it into inks used by various industries, artists around the world. Prior to this, Nikhil ran a business and tax advisory based out of Mumbai practice where he advised several large corporations, not-for profit organizations and startups. He continues to assist the not-for profits as an advisor. Before this, Nikhil was associated with Ernst & Young. Nikhil’s core competencies include business development, client relations, operational controls, cross-border taxation. Nikhil thrives in managing discipline in unstructured environments and is interested in reinterpreting the way organizations do business. Nikhil was amongst 100 Leading Global Thinkers at Foreign Policy Washington DC 2016.

Robbert Slooten is sustainability program manager at Signify, the world leader in lighting formerly known as Philips Lighting. In this role, Robbert now oversees a sustainable packaging program, driving global multidisciplinary project teams to identify and implement non-plastic packaging solutions. Prior to his current role, Robbert managed two of Signify’s Brighter Lives, Better World commitments - zero carbon and zero waste. He was responsible for building Signify’s carbon emissions reduction and offsetting strategy. Under his direction, Signify completed the first-ever virtual Power Purchase Agreement in Poland and was the first corporate to apply IRECs in the Gulf region. Robbert studied Industrial Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he mastered in Innovation Management with a focus on Sustainable Energy Technologies.

Thomas Marinelli is heading the Sustainable Design & Products program in Signify. Signify is a global leader in lighting, with recognized expertise in the development and application of innovative, energy-efficient lighting systems and services that improve people’s lives. Philips/Signify have focused on environmental sustainability since the 1970s. Mr. Marinelli is responsible for driving Sustainability strategic priorities towards product businesses, identify energy efficiency and other sustainable design opportunities for the lighting product portfolio, and identify business opportunities in making the Signify propositions more interesting and attractive for the customer. Mr. Marinelli has a PhD in heterogeneous catalysis and an MBA degree from the Rotterdam School of Management. He started his working career in The Coca-Cola Company where he had various assignments in product integrity and process improvement. In the past fifteen years he was responsible for vast variety of sustainability projects in several Royal Philips businesses before moving to his current position in Signify (formerly Philips Lighting).

Dr Jenneke Heising is an assistant professor at the Food Quality and Design group in the Department of Agrotechnology and Food Sciences at Wageningen University. Jenneke completed her study Food Technology and her Ph.D. at Wageningen University on the topic of Intelligent Packaging for monitoring food quality. Her research interests lie in the area of food packaging, with a focus on the relationship between food packaging and the quality of packed foods. She has collaborations with researchers in several other disciplines, e.g. logistics and consumer science. Currently she focuses mainly on the design of sustainable food packaging that reduces food waste or influences the quality of foods, with a special interest for active and intelligent packaging and on modelling quality reactions of foods.