The Arlington, VA-based The Packaging Education Forum (PEF) selects Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY) as its 2002-2003 Packaging Leader of the Year. The award officially recognizes Kodak's many customer-responsive packaging innovations, the ingenuity, dedication and hard work of the Kodak packaging professionals for bringing these ideas to market and Kodak's support of college-level packaging education, particularly at the Rochester Institute of Technology, PEF says.

The Kodak packaging team, under the direction of Jim Scott, Director, Package Engineering & Graphics Design, Kodak has introduced several innovative packaging concepts to the marketplace, PEF says. These include:

• Trade channel-specific packages for film—including composite cans for refrigerated vending machine sales of single-use cameras, pegboard displayed cartons for convenience store and supermarket checkstand sales, and eight-pack cubes for club store sales.
• Test-market evaluations of standup flexible pouches for film sold in Canadian drug chain outlets.
• Bi-modal carton/integral clear plastic clamshell designed for combination digital camera/MP3 player, with one primary facing for use in digital-camera departments, the opposite side for music sections.
• The DryView tray package for X-ray film, which incorporates an RF label to communicate with the X-ray printer, signaling what type of film is in the tray.

"As a Fortune 500 company in an extremely competitive business environment, it's extremely important that Kodak as a company listens and responds to its customers not only through our products, but through the packaging we create for every product," says Jim Scott, Kodak director of package engineering & graphics design. "We're pleased and honored to be recognized by PEF for our efforts to meet the needs of our customers, and for acknowledging our efforts to educate our future packaging professionals."

PEF will present the Packaging Leader award to Kodak Nov. 5 in the Vista Ballroom of McCormick Place in Chicago, in conjunction with Pack Expo Intl. 2002. Past recipients include Nestle USA, Anheuser-Busch, Campbell Soup, Kraft and Procter & Gamble, among others.