A striking packaging design for garden plants has won St Benedict’s Catholic High School in Warwickshire this year’s Confederation of Paper Industries’ (CPI) PaperWorks Design and Technology competition for Cardboard Packaging.

The winning entry, Gorgeousness in a pot, from St Benedict’s team of 11-14 year olds, was based on the “Green Geranium” brief and has earned its Design and Technology department a cheque for £250, while the students involved in designing the packaging are rewarded with £100 of High Street vouchers.

PaperWorks’ panel of judges, drawn from the CPI, fellow UK trade association BPIF Cartons and a number of packaging designers and specialists, decided that the Alcester-based school’s graphics and highly functional packaging for delivering organically-grown plants had gone above and beyond the brief, creating a memorable brand image that “could have come out of a professional studio”.

Runners up prizes will be awarded to Montsaye Academy in Northamptonshire, last year’s winners of the competition, for its team design based on the “Bass Tech” headphones brief and Wesley King of Springwood High School in King’s Lynn also for his take on packaging for headphones. Each school will receive a cheque for £100 to use towards equipment for their Design and Technology departments, with the students receiving £50 of High Street vouchers.

Aimed at Key Stage 3 (KS3), the PaperWorks competition was open to any school in the UK. Students were invited to create a logo and brand, then design a packaging solution based on their own innovative ideas.

CPI’s engagement with schools through its award-winning PaperWorks multimedia resource and the cardboard packaging competition, which is in its third year, has again proved successful, with this year’s entries of an exceptionally high standard.

Director of Packaging Affairs, Andy Barnetson, said: “Congratulations to St Benedict’s as the quality of entries from all the schools was again outstanding. It’s clear that the students put in maximum effort to create a very practical design with imaginative branding that would work well for florists and garden centres.”

St Benedict’s Design and Technology teacher, David Wright, said that the school’s students had risen to the challenge presented by the PaperWorks competition, which has helped them both work as a team and make the most of their individual talents.

He added: “They spent a lot of time researching, analysing and generating a range of ideas.  They investigated environmental issues, sustainability and transport costs discovering that a good design is a compromise between many factors and constraints. This competition has helped them to gain an insight into the working of a real life design scenario.”

The CPI PaperWorks Design and Technology for Cardboard Packaging module has been developed to fit with modern classroom teaching techniques and facilities, and supports the industry’s aim to counter some of the common misconceptions of what has always been one of the most sustainable and forward-thinking manufacturing sectors in the UK.