Pakko selected for Start-Up of Year finals

Nina Nguyen's custom packaging and print business Pakko has been named as a finalist in the MyBusiness Awards, for Start-up Business of the Year.

The MyBusiness Awards is a benchmark for excellence in Australia and the largest independent awards programme celebrating SME business owners and professionals. The finalist list features 250 high-achieving individuals and businesses across 30-plus submission-based categories.

Pakko was established in Queensland in 2017 by Nguyen, who began her foray into boxes six years prior, when she founded The Box Company in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley area.

The company says its long-term goals include simplifying the user experience in the development of custom packaging, reducing delivery times by 50 per cent, and continuing to excel in globally competitive manufacturing standards, pricing and sustainability.

Pakko prints on its boxes with a four-colour MTEX digital printer, a water-based single-pass system for digital printing of labels and corrugated boxes, manufactured in Portugal, and distributed here by Neil Southerington’s Graffica operation. The Pakko client list includes some impressive names, such as the likes of Telstra and Heineken

Nina Nguyen, founder and managing director of Pakko said she was delighted and humbled to be recognised and named as a finalist. She said, “This nomination is a testament to our Pakko team values. Our commitment to sustainability, our resilience in challenging times and our absolute care for one another is the key to any success we share.”

“Packaging is powerful; it can add value, it can send a new message or enhance brand awareness. We develop and deliver packages that represents the character of every brand and every business we work with.”

Nguyen said, “The company was established with a vision to create an Australian packaging house that will compete with global standards at every level. Our mission is to bring creativity and colour into every package and make each experience meaningful. Packaging is powerful; it can add value, it can send a new message or enhance brand awareness. We develop and deliver packages that represents the character of every brand and every business we work with.”

Pakko operates from Brisbane, employing local people and sourcing all production materials from local paper merchants. Nguyen says, “We believe in supporting our community; when we work together, we all succeed.

“Traditionally, in Australia business has sought packaging and manufacture from overseas – our team at Pakko is on a mission to show the world that Australian packaging and manufacture is more efficient, innovative and competitive than that of our global counterparts,” says Nguyen.

In what it says is a first for Australian packaging Pakko created the Interactive Design Process (IDP), a simple platform for creating and designing tailored, branded packaging on the Pakko website. This tech-savvy innovation allows customers to design online, brand their design, review a sample, receive an instant quote, and finally, place an order online. Within 10-12 days the order is ready.

All the materials used to create Pakko packaging is sustainability sourced certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Food and Drug Administration.