The anticipation is growing as we draw closer to the 2025 Global Pouch Forum and the first-ever presentation of the Steve Fairfield Memorial Award for Flexible Packaging Innovation.

Steve Fairfield was a flexible packaging innovator who left an indelible mark on the baby food and fruit purée industries. Befittingly, the new Steve Fairfield Memorial Award will annually honor a top innovation in flexible packaging. 

Steve Fairfield’s entrepreneurial and visionary contributions reshaped the flexible pouching landscape through his pioneering venture, Eco-Containers. That company was later acquired by Skjodt-Barrett Foods, which is sponsoring the award.

“Skjodt-Barrett Foods is thrilled to announce the Steve Fairfield Memorial Award for Flexible Packaging Innovation, honoring Steve’s lifetime contributions to the advancement of packaging in the baby food and fruit purée snacking industries,” said Mike Bell, Director of Marketing, Skjodt-Barrett Foods. “This award celebrates breakthroughs in flexible packaging, driving the development of more sustainable and efficient products.”

Steve's passion for his ideas was instrumental in the early adoption of spouted, stand-up pouches by leading global brands. This packaging format is now ubiquitous within the baby food and fruit snack categories.

“When the first pouched baby foods entered the market around 2008, it was a revolutionary sea change for the category, which had relied on small, glass jar packaging since the 1920s,” notes Douglas J. Peckenpaugh, Group Publisher, The Packaging Group, BNP Media. “Today, pouch formats dominate the baby food category, with puréed products featuring fruits, vegetables, grains, yogurt, and other foods now successfully marketed to all ages. We have Steve Fairfield to thank for this landmark moment in the food industry.”

Peckenpaugh added: “Every year, we continue to see legacy product lines transformed through strategic use of flexible packaging like pouches. While many food and beverage products find an ideal fit in flexible, pouch packaging, we are also seeing non-food products across personal care, beauty, household, and other consumer packaged goods (CPG) segments convert to the format. The shipping costs alone afforded by flexible packaging offer a significant profitability boost to companies when converting from rigid packaging—not to mention the improved branding, end-user convenience, shelf presence, merchandising, and other benefits. Flexible packaging also has a great sustainability story—one that gets better every year through supply-chain advances.”

To learn more about the award and to nominate a top innovator in flexible packaging, click here. The deadline to submit nominations is January 31, 2025.

To learn more about the 2025 Global Pouch Forum – which will take place June 18-20, 2025, in Clearwater, Florida – click here.

“Steve Fairfield embodied the spirit of innovation that we now celebrate through this new award presented in his honor,” Peckenpaugh said. “Every year, we celebrate flexible packaging success stories and innovations at our Global Pouch Forum event. We look forward to celebrating the new Steve Fairfield Memorial Award for Flexible Packaging Innovation, which will be awarded to a new ‘innovation of the year’ each year at the event moving forward, along with prominent feature coverage in Packaging Strategies.”