Students use packaging smarts to vie for a trip to Italy

For the past four years, the Italian Trade Commission (ITC) (www.italtradeusa.com), in partnership with UCIMA (the Italian Association of Automatic Packing and Packaging Machinery Manufacturers) (www.ucima.it), and in cooperation with the Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP) (www.iopp.org), has provided eight U.S. packaging students with the opportunity to experience Italy's new packaging technologies and marketing strategies face-to-face via a complimentary trip to that country.

Announced in 2001 at PACK EXPO Las Vegas, and held every year since, the Italian Packaging Technology Awards (IPTA) program asks students from among 15 premier North American packaging universities to write technical papers on packaging. The goal of the program is to strengthen the awareness of Italian technology and innovation within various packaging research and education programs by these schools.

The competition is open to registered students in junior-, senior- and graduate-level degree programs of academic studies. In addition to the 15 universities currently involved in the program, other schools may be included with the agreement of ITC, UCIMA and IoPP.

To determine a student's eligibility to submit a paper to the program, each university's respective faculty looks at criteria such as grade-point average, transcripts and co-op program activities. The program requires that students who are selected to submit papers write on topics relating either to technical innovation in the packaging machinery manufacturing industry, or innovation in packaging materials.

For judging, each university program director/co-coordinator selects one student paper for submission to the IoPP for final selection. The IoPP panel of judges, chosen in accordance with guidelines established by the ITC and UCIMA, are tasked with choosing eight papers that best exemplify the criteria decided upon by these two organizations. The authors of the eight award-winning papers receive a complimentary trip to Italy, hosted by ITC and UCIMA and chaperoned by three predetermined faculty professors.

The trip, held in June for two weeks, includes visits to selected Italian packaging machinery manufacturers' offices and facilities, orientation at ITC's offices in Rome and/or at UCIMA's offices in Milan, and other related activities. According to the program sponsors, the trip provides valuable benefits and experiences to the chosen students, while giving the participating Italian packaging machinery manufacturers a unique opportunity to showcase their packaging technology in action to these future decision makers and end users.

Upon their return, students and professors are asked to submit a summary of the program and how it impacted their packaging education.

The 2006 edition of the IPTA program was launched at PACK EXPO Las Vegas in September. While at presstime, no deadline has been set for the receipt of papers, IoPP communications manager Chris Barry says that "by March 15, 2006, the Italian Trade Commission and UCIMA must have a definitive list of the winners selected to allow for the necessary travel preparations."

For more information about the IPTA competition deadline, contact Jim Peters, IoPP's director of education, at 630/696-4011, or by e-mail at [email protected].

IPTA is an initiative of the Italian Trade Commission, Government Agency. To receive information about the latest packaging machinery and technologies from Italy, call 888/ITALTRADE or visit www.machinesitalia.org.