Programme 2021

Paul joined PepsiCo on in September 2017. Prior to that he acted as Director General of spiritsEUROPE for 5 years, Director of the European Retail Round Table (ERRT) for 4 years, and as Deputy Secretary General of Eurochambres for 10 years. Before joining Eurochambres, Paul worked as CEO of the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland, having spent several years before that in the Irish Industrial Development Authority – responsible for attracting and developing industry in Ireland. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University College Dublin, and an MBA from UBI/Mercer University.

Alexis Van Maercke is Secretary General of APEAL, The Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging.

Before joining APEAL in 2016, he was policy officer at the European Commission, Directorate General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.

Prior to this he spent five years in the European Parliament as political advisor to Marianne Thyssen, former Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, in charge of legislative files related to food safety, environment and consumer protection.  

He holds a Master's degree in Law from the University of Leuven in Belgium as well as a Master's in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe in Warsaw, Poland.

Jo Chidley is a chemist and the Founder of Beauty Kitchen UK Ltd, a company on a mission to create the most sustainable beauty products in the world. Widely regarded as one of the pioneers of sustainable beauty, Jo is driving the beauty industry forward with better practise approaches, always. She is Beauty Kitchen’s toughest critic, inspecting everything from the efficacy of the products, to the way the ingredients are sourced, right down to the packaging sustainability for each product. Sustainability in packaging is a subject that is close to her heart and inspired Beauty Kitchen’s RETURN • REFILL • REPEAT programme. Jo has won industry awards, including the ‘Who’s Who in Natural Beauty’ and business awards such as ‘Scale Up Entrepreneur of the Year’. She features in national and international press and is regularly invited to speak at global sustainability events, to share her ideas and knowledge on how all of us can develop new ways to build a more sustainable future.

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.

She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Graphic Design Department in 2012, where she entered Dogus University with a 100% scholarship. She also did a double major in Visual Communication Design. She studied at the Académie des Beaux-Art de Tournai in Belgium for 6 months with the Erasmus program in her third year. She started to work in a packaging design agency after her graduation. Afterwards, she worked as a Graphic Design Specialist at Philip Morris for 4 years. Joining the Arçelik family in 2018, she is working as a Senior Graphic and Product Communication Specialist and is responsible for packaging design and on-product graphics. She completed her master's degree with thesis in Yeditepe University Graphic Design department in 2020.

He 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.

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”.

Vincent RASPAIL is material scientist that spent about 20years in the plastic industry at all level of product development  from ideation to production and end of life. He helped company such as Arkema, BASF, and Dupont to innovate and develop new plastic and new applications especially looking at product packaging interaction. Currently, Vincent is leading the Packaging Technology Roadmap for sustainability at GSK Consumer Health Pain Relief, looking to improve environmental footprint of primary packaging such as blister, tubes and bottles looking, while challenging the industry. He is a strong believer in cross-industry innovation and is always keen to learn more about others R&D best practices.

Piotr Durys is a sourcing professional with over 10 years supply chain experience. Trained as a financial controller, he also holds CIPS Diploma and leads a team responsible for procuring cosmetics packaging in Central & Eastern Europe for Avon International, part of Natura & CO. Apart from driving cost & process efficiencies while maintaining agility, his focus is also on implementing value engineering & sustainable solutions into category strategies that enable profitable growth and deliver value added to the end customer. Self-starter with strong communication skills and experience of working in multinational environment & matrix structures

Niels Prinsen is a senior structural packing designer with over 20-years’ experience in packaging development at Philips. Currently working for different categories like Beauty, Sleep & Respiratory, One blade and Coffee. He is an expert in end-2-end structural packaging design & development from technical design, production and mark introduction at retail and online.

Recently announced as winner of the Rising Star award at the UK Packaging Awards 2020 and one of the winners of the Packaging Innovations 30 under 30 award, Amelia is Commercial Director at Garçon Wines. Starting as business development executive less than three years ago, Amelia’s been at the forefront of the commercialisation of one of the most impactful wine packaging innovations of the past two centuries. Garçon Wines is the multi award-winning British start-up that exists to make the wine industry more sustainable in a 21st century world, through innovating in wine packaging, starting with bottles which are the single largest contributor to wine’s carbon footprint. To this aim, they are the inventors of planet-friendly bottles that are uniquely flat to save space and made entirely from recycled PET, pre-existing not single-use plastic, to save weight and energy.

Benjamin has been with Mintel since 2012. In his current role as Global Packaging Insights Director, he is responsible for creating and delivering Mintel’s packaging content. Benjamin also leads the delivery of bespoke packaging insights, focusing on the specific packaging needs of Mintel’s clients.