Red Dagger Hot Sauce Glass Container Takes Top Prize in MSU Student Packaging Design Competition

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Red Dagger Hot Sauce Glass Container Takes Top Prize in Michigan State Student Packaging Design Competition

Arlington, VA (September 14, 2021) – The first-place winner of the 2021 Glass Packaging Design Competition at Michigan State University (MSU) School of Packaging is the student team of Brendan Tulpa, Mitchell VanNote, Maddie Vasquez, Reed Vogt, and Kailey Wood. The winning team beat out 43 other student teams with their Red Dagger Hot Sauce packaging design. 

“I am excited to congratulate the 2021 winners of the MSU School of Packaging student design competition,” said Scott DeFife, President of the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI). “Getting to see the next generation put their heads together to design premier food and beverage packaging in glass makes certain that the future of packaging design is in good hands. Thank you again to the MSU School of Packaging and Ardagh Glass Packaging – North America (AGP – NA) for making this wonderful partnership possible for another year.” 

The winning student design features flint glass and is designed to look like a dagger. The blade, handguard and neck details are all embossed features of the bottle. To truly cap off the dagger look, the neck and closure are designed to look like the handle and pommel, by which consumers could wield the bottle.                                 

AGP – NA hosted the winning team and their instructor Angela Brann for a tour of the company’s Winchester, Ind., glass manufacturing facility and welcomed the students to its Indianapolis headquarters for meetings with the Ardagh executive team. The students were presented with a Lucite model of their winning design at a special dinner ceremony. 

“Thank you to GPI for the opportunity to compete in this competition, and thank you to Ardagh for hosting us, producing our prototype, and giving us a great glass packaging process experience,” said Maddie Vasquez, Junior at MSU. “This project overall was a great way for my classmates and me to experience the industry firsthand.” 

“As a new instructor at MSU, I was very excited to participate in the site visit at Ardagh and meet with Dale DeVore, Chairman of the GPI Academic Program,” said Angela Brann, Instructor at MSU. “After viewing the glass container production process in Winchester, Indiana and meeting with the team at the Ardagh facility in Indianapolis, the students and I learned more about the many roles, technologies, and quality requirements associated with producing glass containers.  Thank you to all of the industry professionals from Ardagh and GPI who shared their passion for glass to assist in educating our students.  The peek into the daily activities of the industry professionals generated many career-related questions for our winning design team.  As our students seek internships and future careers, the experience of learning from a company focused on high quality will be very beneficial to them.  We have been so fortunate to be a part of this partnership for so many years.”   

“We are pleased to support the GPI academic program and honored to serve as the hosts for this year’s winning student design team and their instructor from MSU,” said Gina Behrman, Vice President, Marketing, Communications and New Product Development, AGP - NA. “These students have a bright future in the packaging industry, and we hope that sharing our team’s passion for glass will have a lasting impact on their careers.”

The 44 student teams, all randomly assigned, from the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 Packaging with Glass and Metal class participated in the competition, working on the project throughout the semester as they learned about the design and manufacture of glass bottles and jars.

The top 10 submissions (5 from each semester) were judged by an industry panel including Jonathan Crowe, AGP-NA, Doug Laib, O-I Americas North, Bill Eaton, Pepsico, Dave Wengerhoff, Food Partners Consulting, and Rich Crawford.

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 About the Glass Packaging Institute

Founded in 1919 as the Glass Container Association of America, the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI) is the trade association representing the North American glass container industry. On behalf of glass container manufacturers, GPI promotes glass as the optimal packaging choice, advances environmental and recycling policies, advocates industry standards, and educates packaging professionals. Follow GPI on Twitter and Facebook, and connect with us on LinkedIn for updates on all things glass. Learn more at www.gpi.org.