Metsä Board Wins Two Years Running: Folding Cartons Enter the Era of Integrated Design

Brand meetings often bring a seemingly simple request: "The folding cartons for next season need to be more sustainable, but they must not look cheaper." By prepress, the questions become: How thick should the board be? Will the creases crack? Will the graphics still look good once folded into a three-dimensional box? If the answer is only to change the substrate or print a recycling icon, the design upgrade has not really begun. Metsä Board paperboard cartons winning Carton of the Year at the European Carton Excellence Awards two years in a row brings the question back into focus: how is the competitiveness of sustainable folding cartons actually built through materials, structure, prepress, and brand presentation?[1]

Because the award goes to more than a pretty printed piece. It goes to a packaging solution that works as a whole, with materials, structure, imagery, and the use case all working together.[1]

The 2026 winner was Sephora After Christmas Calendar 2025, made for Sephora by Autajon Packaging Belgium. It used MetsäBoard Pro FBB Bright 290 and 350 gsm, with Autajon also responsible for the structural design and graphic design.[1] The entry received Carton of the Year at the awards ceremony held in Rome on September 17, 2026.[1]

Two other entries from the same edition are also worth studying. Tequila Buen Amigo Duo Pack, made with MetsäBoard Prime FBB Bright 380 gsm, won the Beverage category. Toty Ilumina CC Cream packaging took the Gold Award in the Pharma & Healthcare category with MetsäBoard Prime FBB Bright 290 gsm.[1] The 2025 Carton of the Year was LUMENE 2024 Beauty Advent Calendar, which also used Metsä Board paperboard.[1]

These grammage figures are not instructions for every brand to copy. They simply show that different products can use their own board grade and structural approach to create the right display and user experience. The point of winning is not "which grammage did they use?" It is whether material selection was part of the overall design decision

We are no longer just swapping materials. We need to think about how much material to use, how the carton folds, and whether it can stay stable. That is the real systems-design challenge.[2][6]

In 2024, Pyr'yev, Piłczyńska, Kibirkštis, and others proposed a paperboard carton design method for minimizing solid board. The focus is on reducing unnecessary solid-board use at the design stage, rather than adding slogan-like sustainability language afterward.[2] Nygårds's study of corner behavior in carton board boxes also reminds us that a carton's performance is often decided in its fold corners, loading, and the details of forming the box.[6]

So a brand brief cannot stop at "use sustainable paperboard." It must spell out what the product needs. Should it create a strong three-dimensional identity on the shelf? Does the box need to open in a particular direction? Which panels are the main visual faces? Which fold corners must show no obvious whitening or cracking? The earlier these conditions enter the design, the better the chance of cutting material, space, and processing waste without sacrificing stability

A mature material-saving strategy is not about making the board so thin that production stability suffers. It is about using sound structural and layout decisions to remove excess material while keeping the carton up to standard

Because a folding carton is not a flat poster. Fold lines, creases, registration, and graphic placement all need to be judged in advance for what they will look like once the flat artwork becomes a three-dimensional carton

Carton board's creasing properties have long been treated as technical issues that can be measured and compared.[3] The relevant PIRA method literature also discusses how to determine carton board creasing quality with a PIRA carton board creaser.[4][5] This means creasing is not merely a craft detail to check during proofing. It is a process condition that affects folding, carton forming, and appearance

In day-to-day prepress practice, the delivery check can be split into three gates:

・Structural gate: Check the dieline, fold lines, glue flap, panel sequence, and corner folds. Use a simple mock-up to confirm that the graphics still read correctly in three dimensions

・Artwork and copy gate: Check that text, color, images, and key identification elements stay clear of fold lines, glue flaps, and areas prone to distortion, and make sure file delivery follows shared technical specifications

・Formed-carton gate: Do not inspect only the flat sheet. Check the folded carton's appearance, creases, corners, and actual assembly result as well

The Ghent Workgroup's technical specifications, official specification pages, and specifications overview establish a shared prepress baseline across the supply chain.[7][8][9] For brands, design firms, carton manufacturers, and printers, the value of this shared language is practical: fewer projects depend on verbal explanations, and preflight, proofing, and version control become easier to track

Do not copy the board numbers from award-winning entries. Copy the working method that takes a design intention all the way to formed-carton validation

First, write sustainability requirements as acceptance criteria, not adjectives. For example, specify material usage, structural targets, appearance tolerances, proofing method, and required production tests. Second, compare different paperboard grades, structural dimensions, and crease-line layouts before final artwork, so material-saving decisions and converting risks are assessed together. Third, put the flat artwork, dieline, creasability, color performance, and physical carton sample into one version trail, so that a design is not approved in flat form only to fail visually and functionally once the carton is formed

Metsä Board's back-to-back wins can serve as reference cases, but they cannot be treated as a universal answer for every carton. Winning does not by itself prove that a package has completed a full life-cycle assessment, recyclability validation, or regulatory fit in every market. If the product needs high moisture resistance, cold-chain performance, heavy-load capacity, a special barrier, or strict regulatory compliance, the material and structural decisions must be revisited

A practical rule is this: the next time a brand asks for a "more sustainable folding carton," the print supply chain should first ask for a shared brief covering materials, structure, prepress, and formed-carton testing. Pricing and board selection should be discussed after that. This method is best suited to folding-carton design and pre-production coordination. If the package needs a special barrier, resistance to extreme conditions, or high load-bearing strength, the relevant engineering tests still need to be added

・Metsä Board has won Carton of the Year two years in a row, showing that high-end folding-carton competition has shifted from a single-material focus to integrated design.[1]

・The 290, 350, and 380 gsm figures describe material conditions in award-winning entries, not a standard every brand should copy.[1]

・Material reduction in sustainable folding cartons should account for solid board usage, fold-corner behavior, and formed-carton stability at the same time.[2][6]

・Creasing quality should be included in measurable prepress and process validation, not left to proofing experience alone.[3][4][5]

・A brand brief should connect materials, the dieline, artwork files, and physical carton samples in one traceable acceptance chain

For print manufacturing, a carton's competitiveness is no longer just about board cost. It depends on whether materials, creasing, converting, and proofing can work together effectively. For design teams, the dieline and structural constraints should enter creative decisions earlier. For AI adoption, AI can help compare structural options, flag preflight anomalies, and manage versions, but it cannot replace creasing tests or physical carton-forming tests. For SaaS, the worthwhile direction is to connect BOMs, dielines, file checks, proofing records, test results, and environmental data. The real problem still to solve is how to give sustainability claims verifiable data, and how to let brands, design firms, carton manufacturers, and printers share one set of specifications and version language.[2][3][7]

[1] Metsä Board Wins "Carton of the Year" Again: Sustainable Folding-Carton Design Moves Up a Level

[2] Pyr'yev Y., Piłczyńska K., Kibirkštis E., et al. (2024). A method of minimizing solid board in designing a paperboard carton. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4014170/v1

[3] Creasing properties of carton board. DOI: 10.3403/bs6965

[4] Recommendation for a method for the determination of the creasing quality of carton board as measured by the PIRA carton board creaser. DOI: 10.3403/00106718

[5] Method for determination of the creasing quality of carton board (Pira method). DOI: 10.3403/00299118

[6] Nygårds M. (2018). 4 Behavior of corners in carton board boxes. SPARK. DOI: 10.1515/spark.39.6

[7] Ghent Workgroup: GWG Technical Specifications Homepage. Ghent Workgroup

[8] Ghent Workgroup: Official GWG Homepage. Ghent Workgroup

[9] Ghent Workgroup: GWG Specifications Overview. Ghent Workgroup