Specialist plastics packaging technology business Petainer has selected a design by students at Birmingham City University as the winner of the company’s second International student design competition.

The competition challenged students to develop innovative new ideas for a PET (PolyEthylene Terephthalate) container for juices and food.

The winning design detailed a sleek and classy table sauce bottle for ketchups, mayonnaise and other sauce-based condiments. The winning sauce bottle design has the potential to be easily branded and allows a range of different sauce varieties to be packaged in the same way.

Students from Technical University in Liberec, Czech Republic, the University of Skövde in Sweden and Birmingham City University in the UK took part in the four week contest. Their task was to design an innovative container which has great shelf-appeal and high levels of functionality and which also considers sustainability.

The winning design, by Chan Yung Khang, Yoan Dahan and Richard Barnett from Birmingham City University was chosen after much deliberation by Petainer judges. Nigel Pritchard, Chief Executive of Petainer, said, ‘This year I was again incredibly impressed with the quality and high standard of the students’ designs. Their attention to detail and innovative ideas made judging the competition a challenging and thought-provoking experience.’