The Cepac Files : Thirty Trophies, Twelve Pernod Ricard Boxes And Harry Potter’s Missing Fucking Award

By TCAP / August 1, 2026

Warburtons and Cepac, a match made in didabled hill

Cepac has built itself a fucking cardboard Versailles.

Gold badges hang from the walls. Silver glints beneath the strip lighting. Bronze has been polished until it looks almost employable. Every retail display becomes an engineering miracle, every printed box a moon landing and every awards dinner another chapter in the sacred history of putting vodka beside the fucking crisps.

The company’s awards page claims a “proven track record of creating innovative products with corrugated,” because apparently even cardboard needs its own creation myth and a marketing department willing to shovel it.

That sounds magnificent.

It suggests years of invention. Laboratories humming through the night. Engineers forcing uncooperative fibres into shapes previously considered impossible. Perhaps somewhere beneath Rotherham, a team of exhausted scientists has finally taught cardboard to experience grief, submit itself for an award and expense a table for ten.

Then you inspect the trophy cabinet, and the miracle coughs up a fucking price list.

Most of the awards concern printing, retail displays, secondary packaging or point-of-sale furniture. Several belong to the same handful of alcohol brands. One employee award has wandered into the innovation record. A highly commended gin display sits beside outright winners. The same Jameson display received a local gold and then boarded a paid international awards escalator the following year.

Meanwhile, the two clearest innovation prizes appear to recognise the same seafood box.

One fucking fish box.

Two ceremonies.

Seven years of corporate theology.

Most remarkably, the page credits a Harry Potter display with a 2022 POPAI award that Cepac’s own contemporary nomination and results pages do not identify among its entries or winners.

Harry Potter has apparently performed his finest vanishing act.

The trophy remains on Cepac’s page.

The supporting history has fucked off up its own corrugated arse.

Cepac Did Win Awards

Let us begin with the important qualification before the marketing department soils itself, climbs onto the nearest pallet and starts screaming about persecution.

These are real trade awards.

Judges assessed entries. Cepac produced work that received genuine recognition. Its 2025 FIA Best in Show result appears particularly substantial, while several other projects clearly demonstrated impressive printing and production skill.

TCAP has found no evidence that Cepac bought a guaranteed victory, bribed judges or ordered trophies from some bloke operating an engraving machine behind a kebab shop.

That is not the criticism.

The problem is simpler and more contemptible. Cepac takes commercially structured, self-entered industry competitions and strips away the machinery surrounding them until nothing remains but the shiny object and the corporate erection.

Entry fees disappear down the corporate trapdoor.

Nomination rules vanish.

Repeat projects become fresh triumphs.

An existing gold winner re-entered into another paid competition emerges as an independent international coronation, as though God himself descended to bless the fucking pallet.

Medal levels go missing when they are inconvenient.

Highly commended entries join outright wins beneath a page promising innovative products.

Customer concentration receives no explanation.

Judging fields remain unidentified.

By the time Cepac finishes dressing the cabinet, ordinary trade recognition has become evidence of perpetual industrial genius.

The awards may be real.

The fucking framing is bullshit in formalwear: a corpse propped upright at the awards table and introduced as industrial genius.

Welcome To The Corporate Trophy Abattoir

Awards pages rarely exist to inform. That would require context, and context is the natural predator of corporate wank.

They exist to stun the visitor before the sales team arrives.

Nobody expects a company to publish a philosophical treatise on the weaknesses of industry competitions. Marketing naturally selects favourable material. However, there is a difference between putting your best foot forward and repeatedly marching the same cardboard leg past the reviewing stand until the fucking thing develops trench foot.

Cepac’s page stacks roughly thirty results from 2019 to 2025 beneath its Innovation menu.

The contents include:

Gold, silver and bronze awards.
Best in Show and Best in Class distinctions.
A highly commended result.
An employee’s Rising Star award.
Secondary-packaging prizes.
Retail-ready and point-of-sale awards.
Flexographic-printing honours.
Multiple Pernod Ricard alcohol displays.
A seafood Chiller Pack recognised twice.
Several results with no product identified.
One three-win claim describing only a single winner.
A Harry Potter award contradicted by Cepac’s contemporary reporting.

Mixed together, the collection resembles a chef tipping every ingredient in the walk-in fridge into one stockpot, boiling it into grey corporate sludge and calling the resulting fuck-up “proven innovation”.

Some awards concern genuine product concepts.

Others recognise printing execution.

Several reward retail displays designed to move alcohol.

One celebrates an employee.

Another is not even a win.

Nevertheless, all of them enter through the same corporate loading bay.

Nothing receives context. Everything becomes a trophy. The distinction between invention, print quality, personal achievement and supermarket theatre is fed into a corrugator, pulped beyond recognition and flattened into one boast-shaped fucking sheet.

POPAI Opens The Fucking Till

Cepac makes considerable use of the POPAI UK and Ireland Awards.

The company says it collected three trophies for Jameson and Malibu displays in 2025. It also celebrates POPAI results from 2024, 2022 and 2020.

These awards are not free acts of unsolicited admiration. Nobody kicked down Cepac’s door, fell to their knees before a vodka display and begged to honour the cardboard messiah.

In 2025, POPAI charged members £365 for an early single entry or £415 after the early deadline. Non-members paid £435 or £485. Every figure excluded VAT.

Companies entering five or more projects received volume discounts.

Naturally.

Nothing says rare distinction like a fucking multipack with a volume discount.

Innovation and sustainability categories cost another £185 each. Full payment had to arrive before an entry could be judged, while the rules declared that entry fees would not be refunded under any circumstances. The till, unlike the trophies, came with beautifully clear fucking provenance.

Again, paying did not guarantee nomination.

Nor did it guarantee gold.

However, the official guide states that every nominated entry receives a POPAI award. Judges determine whether the successful nominee receives gold, silver or bronze.

That distinction matters.

Cepac did not merely push money through a slot and wait for a trophy to fall out. Its submissions still had to survive judging and achieve nomination.

Yet nomination was also the door to an award.

Once through that door, the remaining question concerned the colour of the metal dropped into the corporate begging bowl.

Cepac’s 2025 boast does not identify any of the tedious factual shit that might let a reader measure it:

The three precise categories.
The three medal levels.
The number of competing entries.
The total number of nominees.
Whether the same display received more than one distinction.
What each project defeated.

Instead, the page announces “three trophies” for Jameson and Malibu and leaves the reader standing beneath the corporate bullshit cannon.

Gold?

Silver?

Bronze?

A mixture?

Did three different displays win?

Did one project collect an ordinary category award plus an add-on distinction?

Cepac does not trouble the audience with such grubby fucking administration.

Three objects went into the cabinet.

Please admire the shine, ignore the invoice and keep fucking moving.

A Trophy Is Not Necessarily A Fucking First Place

Corporate awards pages adore the word “trophy” because it carries the emotional weight of victory without the administrative nuisance of explaining what happened.

Gold sounds clear.

Winner sounds clear.

Best in Show certainly sounds clear.

“Took home three trophies,” however, is a fog machine with a LinkedIn account, cufflinks and its cock out.

POPAI’s structure allows every nominated entry to receive gold, silver or bronze. Consequently, three trophies could represent three golds, three bronzes or any combination between them.

All would remain legitimate awards.

They would not carry identical significance.

Cepac understands that difference. Its page carefully specifies gold when gold is available. The Jameson display received gold in 2024. Absolut Warhol collected gold in 2025. Claude’s Bistro obtained gold and Best in Show.

When the company possesses the strongest metal, the fucking metal receives a name.

Therefore, the absence of medal levels from the three-trophy claim is conspicuous.

Perhaps all three were gold.

If so, why not say so?

Marketing departments rarely discover modesty precisely when the champagne arrives and the sales director starts pawing at the camera.

The Jameson Display Gets An International Passport

In 2024, Cepac won POPAI gold for a Jameson St Patrick’s Day wholesale display produced for Pernod Ricard.

The project recreated the Jameson distillery and surrounding Dublin pubs. Its modular construction allowed retailers to use the complete installation or smaller elements depending on available space.

That sounds like clever, effective display work. It can be good without the surrounding corporate handjob.

Cepac then entered the same project into the 2025 Shop! Global Awards and won gold for POS Design.

On the awards page, this becomes an international triumph standing separately from the 2024 POPAI result. Cepac’s later annual review calls it a historic milestone and says the display competed against the best in the world.

There is some truth in that.

The international contest was limited to previous gold winners from qualifying local Shop! competitions. Therefore, the field began with projects already recognised in their home markets.

However, the trophy did not descend from the heavens after overseas judges discovered a forgotten cardboard pub in a warehouse.

Entrants had to submit the work again.

Members paid $409 per entry.

Non-members paid $509.

Only projects that had already won local gold in 2024 could participate. Supporting evidence consisted of photographs and video clips rather than the physical display.

A different panel then judged the entries.

Therefore, the international award was real and separately assessed. Nevertheless, it was also the second paid awards campaign for the same Jameson project.

Local gold created eligibility.

Another fee opened the international door.

Fresh photographs and supporting material placed the old winner before another panel.

Then the same cardboard pub came home wearing a second medal and marketing behaved as though it had conquered France.

Cepac treats both awards as separate proof of its continuing innovation record. Technically, they are separate results.

Materially, one project did the work twice.

Jameson got one display.

Cepac got two ceremonies.

The trophy cabinet received fucking compound interest.

Business-Fucking-Class For Cardboard

The language surrounding the international win deserves a closer look.

“International gold” suggests that Cepac’s work travelled across borders, entered a vast open competition and conquered the world.

In practice, the process resembled a champions’ round for previous local gold winners.

That remains an achievement. Yet it also makes the 2025 result dependent on the 2024 victory.

Without the local POPAI gold, Cepac could not enter.

Without another payment, the project would not appear before the global judges.

And without photographs, video and a fresh case study, the Jameson display would have remained where retail furniture normally ends its life: stripped, flattened and wondering why the fuck everybody stopped clapping.

Instead, Cepac bought the existing winner another fucking ticket.

The cardboard passenger moved into business class.

Marketing counted the landing as a new aircraft, wanked over the boarding pass and called the mileage innovation.

The Pernod Ricard Fucking Drinks Cabinet

A striking share of Cepac’s award story involves brands owned by Pernod Ricard.

Across the page and linked announcements, at least twelve distinctions appear connected to Pernod Ricard brands or projects:

Absolut Warhol at the 2025 UK Packaging Awards.
Three 2025 POPAI trophies for Jameson and Malibu displays.
Jameson at the 2025 Shop! Global Awards.
Jameson at the 2024 POPAI Awards.
Malibu at the 2023 UK Packaging Awards.
Absolut at the 2023 UK Packaging Awards.
Absolut at the 2023 Digital Labels & Packaging Awards.
Absolut Voices at the 2022 POPAI Awards.
Campo Viejo at the 2021 UK Packaging Awards.
Beefeater Pink Gin, highly commended in 2020.

There is nothing inherently improper about repeated success with one customer.

A strong commercial relationship can produce years of excellent work. Pernod Ricard owns major brands, buys substantial retail marketing and evidently trusts Cepac to manufacture high-impact displays and packaging.

However, the concentration shoves a corkscrew straight through the impression of a sprawling garden of unrelated invention.

Much of the cabinet emerges from one drinks conglomerate repeatedly commissioning promotional scenery for its alcohol brands.

Absolut enters wearing Warhol.

Malibu arrives dressed as a tiki bar.

Jameson builds a cardboard Dublin.

Beefeater puts on something pink.

Campo Viejo waits beside the wine.

Another banquet begins.

Another photographer crouches near the stage.

Andyet another fucking medal hits the table.

By the end, Cepac has transformed one productive client relationship into a sizeable wing of its innovation museum. It is less a diverse portfolio than the same corporate piss-up changing hats.

Pernod Ricard supplies the bottles.

Cepac supplies the cardboard.

The awards circuit supplies the sacramental fucking lighting.

Harry Potter And The Award Of Fuck-Knows-Where

Now we reach the entry that turns a bloated awards page into a proper little corporate crime scene.

Under the heading “POPAI Awards 2022 – Gold and Bronze Awards,” Cepac’s current page says it received an award in the confectionery category for work with Kinnerton on a Harry Potter Pallet FSDU.

That sounds straightforward.

Unfortunately, Cepac’s own contemporary records tell a different story.

In July 2022, the company announced that it had received two POPAI nominations.

Not three.

Two.

Cepac identified the categories as Short Run Temporary and Wholesale. The company said entries had increased by 25% and described itself as “extrememly” proud.

Apparently, spelling remained outside the judging criteria and beyond the operational reach of every fucker who approved the page.

Then came the October results announcement.

Again, Cepac identified two results:

Gold in the Short Run category for AG Barr’s “Tastes Magic” display.
Bronze in the Wholesale category for Pernod Ricard’s “Absolut Voices” pallet display.

Those results match the two categories Cepac announced in July.

The contemporary nomination page does not mention Kinnerton.

Nor does it identify a confectionery category.

Cepac’s detailed results announcement does not mention Harry Potter.

Likewise, the company does not list a Kinnerton display among its two 2022 winners.

Yet the current awards page places Harry Potter beneath the 2022 gold-and-bronze heading and says Cepac “picked up an award” for it.

From where, exactly, did this fucking thing materialise?

Which fucking medal?

Which category?

Was the year wrong?

Did the project receive recognition elsewhere?

Was it shortlisted rather than awarded?

Did somebody copy the wrong description beneath the heading?

Cepac provides no explanation.

Therefore, the safest conclusion is not that the company fabricated an award. The present evidence supports a narrower and still devastating finding: the Harry Potter claim is misplaced, misdated or otherwise unsupported by Cepac’s own contemporary 2022 reporting.

For a company presenting the page as a permanent record of excellence, that is a great gaping fucking hole in the display board.

The live page says Harry Potter won.

The nomination page identifies only two other projects.

The results page names only those two projects as winners.

No spell can reconcile the three documents.

Somewhere between the awards dinner and the marketing archive, Harry Potter strolled into the trophy cabinet while the paperwork fucked off through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Expelliarmus.

Except the thing being disarmed is basic fucking record-keeping, and Cepac appears to have pointed the wand at its own trousers.

One Fucking Fish Box Carrying The Innovation Department

Cepac positions the awards page beneath its Innovation menu.

The opening sentence praises a proven track record of creating innovative products with corrugated.

Nevertheless, many entries reward print quality, branding, retail displays, secondary packaging or individual achievement. The two clearest prizes specifically centred on invention appear to belong to the same product.

First came the UK Packaging Awards 2019 Best New Concept Award.

Cepac says the Chiller Pack used a unique design to transport fresh seafood while reducing plastic waste and carbon emissions.

A year later, the Aquaculture Awards named it Innovation of the Year.

Again, the product was the Chiller Pack.

The corrugated design incorporated waterproof-liner technology and allowed excess water to drain away so seafood did not sit in it.

That may be a genuinely useful and intelligent product.

Indeed, the Chiller Pack appears closer to the ordinary meaning of innovation than most of the supermarket alcohol scenery surrounding it.

However, it is still one product.

One concept.

One fucking seafood container performing a double shift while the rest of the innovation page sits on its back drinking champagne.

Cepac has parked the same fish box beneath two trophies, shone two spotlights on it and then used both to reinforce a multi-year innovation narrative.

The Chiller Pack won twice.

It did not become two inventions.

A chef does not cook the same sea bass on Tuesday and Wednesday, place both photographs in the window and claim to have discovered two new species.

Yet here stands Cepac’s corrugated cod coffin, carrying the innovation department on its back while Jameson and Absolut throw another awards dinner upstairs. The poor bastard deserves overtime, a pension and somewhere quiet to die.

Print Quality Is Not Fucking Product Innovation

The FIA UK results present another category problem.

Flexographic-printing awards recognise technical execution, print difficulty and production quality. Those are worthwhile achievements. Skilled operators, effective pre-press work, advanced machinery and careful colour control deserve recognition.

Still, printing an excellent poultry box is not the same fucking activity as inventing an innovative packaging product. Skill is not invention merely because marketing puts both words in the same blender.

Cepac’s 2025 Claude’s Bistro entry won gold in Corrugated Post Print – Coated Process. Judges then selected it as Best in Show from the print-category gold winners.

The result appears genuinely impressive. Unlike some of the weaker cabinet furniture, it does not need to be inflated until its buttons fly off.

Cepac’s equipment could run up to 12,000 sheets per hour, while the project involved collaboration with Reproflex3 and multiple machinery, ink, plate, anilox and material suppliers.

There is real craft here.

TCAP has no need to pretend otherwise.

However, Best in Show did not represent a second unrelated innovation. The same Claude’s Bistro poultry box first received gold and then advanced into the Best in Show comparison.

One entry generated two distinctions.

Once again, the awards page counts both.

Gold goes into the cabinet.

Best in Show joins it.

The poultry box remains one fucking poultry box. It has not bred in captivity.

The Strongest Result Still Gets Corporate Cosmetic Surgery

Cepac’s detailed FIA announcement lists:

Gold for Claude’s Bistro.
Silver for Paragon’s Premium Range Burger packaging.
Highly Commended for Natural Trainer Straccetti.
Best in Show for the Claude’s Bistro gold winner.

The main awards page shortens this to “Gold + Best in show” in the heading, then says Cepac also received gold and silver.

The highly commended result disappears from the summary.

That editorial decision is understandable. Companies prefer displaying stronger results.

Yet elsewhere on the same page, Cepac proudly includes a highly commended Beefeater Pink Gin display from 2020.

Apparently, “highly commended” counts when the cabinet needs another plate but disappears when it might dilute a later banquet.

Cepac’s sales director used the FIA results to proclaim that the company was “the best in the business” for high-quality flexo-printed corrugated packaging.

Meanwhile, competitor Saica announced seven FIA accolades from the same 2025 programme: two golds, two silvers and three bronzes.

Cepac still secured Best in Show, which may reasonably carry more weight than a simple medal count. Nevertheless, “best in the business” is corporate trouser-unzipping with its bollocks on the table, not an independently established industry ranking.

The awards did not appoint Cepac emperor of cardboard.

They recognised several entries.

Marketing supplied the fucking crown, cape, coronation and arse-kissing press release.

The FIA Fucking Entry Conveyor

The FIA competition also involved formal entry mechanics.

For members, the first entry was free. Later submissions cost £50 each, plus VAT.

Non-members paid £80 per entry.

Volume discounts applied.

Companies could submit any number of entries into the same category. Each class could produce gold, silver, bronze and highly commended results, although judges did not have to issue every medal or make any award at all.

Again, this was not pay-to-win.

External judges assessed execution and difficulty.

However, it was a structured industry programme that encouraged multiple submissions and offered several levels of recognition across numerous classes.

That context matters when a company assembles every medal, commendation and derivative Best in Show result into one towering claim of innovation supremacy.

The machinery accepts multiple entries.

The judging system produces multiple grades.

Gold winners proceed towards Best in Show.

Marketing then counts each resulting object as another independent piece of divine intervention, an immaculate conception with VAT added.

It is not dishonest to list them.

It is bloody convenient not to explain the production line. Context goes in one end; self-congratulating bullshit comes out the other.

The Digital Labels Awards Sell Marketing Because Of Course They Fucking Do

Cepac also celebrates Digital Labels & Packaging Awards victories in 2022, 2023 and 2025.

The 2022 award recognised a JD Seasonings 40 Pot Box.

In 2023, Cepac won the same Application Excellence in Secondary Packaging category with an Absolut vodka project for Pernod Ricard.

The current awards page says Cepac won that category again in 2025 but offers no product, customer, explanation or judging context.

A heading stands there alone like a waiter who has forgotten the plate but still expects a fucking tip.

The 2025 competition permitted up to three free entries per category, with later submissions costing £50 each. Therefore, this was not an expensive paywall of the POPAI variety.

However, nominated companies agreed to send a representative to the ceremony.

Individual places cost £280 plus VAT.

A table for ten cost £2,785 plus VAT.

The organiser openly advertised profile-building, media attention, customer acquisition, networking, staff motivation and the opportunity to impress prospects through hospitality.

None of that is scandalous.

It is how trade awards operate.

Companies enter work.

Organisers produce a ceremony.

Sponsors gain visibility.

Nominees buy seats.

Winners gain marketing material.

Everybody eats an expensive lunch beneath lighting designed to make a laminated rectangle appear spiritually important.

Yet Cepac presents the output without the commercial ecosystem.

The trophy appears.

The sales funnel is buried beneath the tablecloth, and the invoice crouches beside it like a guilty little bastard.

A Rising Star Climbs Into The Product Cabinet

Cepac’s 2021 section provides one of the purest and stupidest examples of category laundering.

That year, the company won:

Corrugated Retail Ready and Point of Sale.
Reusable Pack of the Year.
Rising Star for employee Reece Hamilton.

Congratulations to Hamilton. Personal recognition for a promising employee is a legitimate achievement.

It is not an innovative corrugated product.

Nevertheless, the Rising Star result sits on a page introduced as proof of Cepac’s track record in creating innovative products.

A human being has been fed into the corrugator because the page is apparently too fucking hungry to distinguish a colleague from a carton.

Out comes another product credential.

Perhaps Hamilton has exceptional structural integrity and folds flat for storage. Otherwise, his professional development does not prove that Cepac invented a fucking box.

The page does not give a shit.

Gold, bronze, employee, display, seafood, vodka, personal achievementeverything enters the same corporate mincer. Bullshit goes in. “Innovation” comes out.

Once processed, every distinction becomes “innovation”.

Highly Commended Becomes Award-Winning Fucking Furniture

In 2020, Cepac’s Beefeater Pink Gin Tesco Quarter Pallet Display received Highly Commended status in a UK Packaging Awards category.

Cepac includes it on the awards page.

Again, there is nothing wrong with celebrating commendation. The result indicates judges thought the work deserved recognition.

However, it was not the category winner.

Cepac’s wider page design makes that distinction easy to miss because highly commended appears among outright winners, gold awards and Best in Show results.

The cabinet does not provide a hierarchy.

Everything receives a heading.

Every project earns visual space.

The casual visitor sees a wall of victories rather than a mixed record containing wins, medals, commendations and personal awards.

Corporate marketing loves this arrangement.

Specificity is dangerous.

Atmosphere sells. Bullshit scales.

The Year Of Four Awards That Becomes A Heap Of Unexplained Fucking Metal

Cepac’s 2020 “Packaging and Point of Sale” section lists:

A UK Packaging Awards win for Retail Ready and Point of Sale.
POPAI gold for Short Run Temporary Display.
POPAI silver for Grocery and General Merchandise Short Run Display.
POPAI bronze for Grocery and General Merchandise Short Run Display.

The page does not identify the products.

Nor does it explain the customers, field sizes or judging distinctions.

Four fucking awards land in rapid succession.

Gold.

Silver.

Bronze.

Another winner.

Readers receive no way to determine whether these involved separate ideas, variations from the same client relationship or materially different pieces of work.

The results may all be well deserved.

Unfortunately, Cepac has preserved the metal while throwing the provenance into the industrial skip.

That is a peculiar way to demonstrate innovation.

If the work is outstanding, show the fucking work.

Explain why it mattered.

Name the customer.

Describe the engineering problem.

Give the judging category.

Tell readers what changed.

Instead, several entries receive less information than a pub raffle run by a bloke who ate the ticket book.

FSC Board Does Not Perform Fucking Carbon Offsetting

The Jameson display introduces another piece of corporate sleight of hand.

Cepac says it digitally printed the project using FSC-certified EB-flute corrugated board, apart from the floor vinyl.

So far, fine.

FSC labels concern the sourcing of forest-based material. Depending on the particular label, products may use material from FSC-certified forests, recycled sources or controlled wood.

Certification can support responsible forestry.

It does not automatically offset a customer’s carbon footprint.

Nevertheless, Cepac says the sustainable materials allowed the customer to “help offset their carbon footprint”.

Where, precisely, is the fucking offset?

The page provides no:

Measured carbon footprint.
Baseline.
Quantity of emissions avoided.
Carbon-credit purchase.
Identified offsetting project.
Calculation methodology.
Explanation of which customer emissions were supposedly balanced.

Perhaps the corrugated alternative reduced emissions compared with another design. If so, Cepac could say that and publish the calculation.

Instead, the copy jumps from FSC-certified board to carbon offsetting as though the logo arrived carrying a bucket of captured CO₂.

Responsible sourcing is not the same thing as offsetting.

Reduced material use is not automatically offsetting.

Recyclability is not offsetting.

A cardboard Jameson pub does not become a carbon sink because somebody used the word “sustainable” before lunch, however enthusiastically marketing wanks over the FSC logo.

UK advertising guidance tells marketers to distinguish emission reduction from carbon offsetting and explain any offsetting scheme used.

Cepac does neither on the Jameson page.

It bought certified board.

Then the copywriter planted a fucking forest inside the sentence. That is not environmental accounting. It is green claim inflation with a cardboard erection.

Even The Trophy Cabinet Is Shoddily Fucked Together

Perhaps Cepac’s industrial facilities produce immaculate work.

Its awards page does not.

The supposed fucking monument to excellence contains:

“Catagories”.
“Projects.The” without a space.
“Award winning” where “award-winning” is required.
Random capitalisation of “Technology”.
“Best in show” with inconsistent capitalisation.
Empty subheadings.
Repeated images.
Awards without named products.
Claims without medal levels.
A three-win 2024 statement describing only one result.
A 2025 Digital Labels award without meaningful supporting information.
The Harry Potter inconsistency.
Confused repetition of the 2025 FIA gold in both heading and body.
An innovation record partly constructed from an employee award and a highly commended gin display.

Cepac says its equipment can handle high-quality flexographic printing at 12,000 sheets per hour.

Apparently, the web page passed through at 12,001 and fired straight into the wall.

The company can register colours across industrial corrugated board, align complex printing and run rotary die-cutting machinery.

Registering an award against the correct fucking project proved more demanding.

A page designed to demonstrate technical precision should not resemble something assembled five minutes before the last pissed guest was thrown out of the ballroom.

Yet there it stands.

“Catagories”.

Thirty trophies.

One absent proofreader and an entire marketing department asleep at the fucking keyboard.

The Missing Fucking Denominators

Awards pages thrive on numerators. Numerators are photogenic little bastards.

Three wins.

Two golds.

One Best in Show.

Another trophy.

What they rarely provide is the denominator.

How many fucking entries?

How many nominees?

What number of medals did the category produce?

How narrow was the field?

How many projects did Cepac enter?

Did the company submit five and win three?

Twenty and win three?

Were there two competitors or twenty?

Cepac’s page does not say. It prefers arithmetic with half the fucking numbers missing.

That omission does not invalidate the results. Still, it prevents readers from measuring their significance.

A gold against fifty exceptional entries carries different weight from gold in a tiny specialist category. A bronze could represent third place in a huge field or one of several graded awards issued to nominated entries.

Without the denominator, the trophy becomes a stage prop in a corporate pantomime.

Large enough to photograph.

Too hollow to weigh.

What Cepac Actually Appears Good At

Beneath the corporate greasepaint – once the bullshit has been scraped off with a palette knife – Cepac appears to possess real strengths.

Its teams have produced technically accomplished print work.

The company operates sophisticated digital and flexographic machinery.

Several displays demonstrate structural ingenuity.

Customers such as Pernod Ricard repeatedly return, suggesting commercial confidence in Cepac’s delivery.

Claude’s Bistro earned a serious Best in Show result.

Meanwhile, the Chiller Pack appears to be a genuinely useful attempt to replace less sustainable seafood packaging.

Those achievements should have been enough.

Cepac could have built a strong page around detailed case studies, measurable results, judging feedback and clear distinctions between product innovation, print excellence, retail design and employee recognition.

Instead, somebody chose the all-you-can-eat corporate bullshit buffet.

Every plaque went onto the same plate.

Then marketing poured gravy, glitter and executive self-regard across the lot and called the resulting fucking casserole a proven record of innovative products.

The result diminishes the stronger achievements.

Claude’s Bistro does not need assistance from a phantom Harry Potter award.

The Chiller Pack does not become more innovative because a Beefeater display received a commendation.

Jameson’s international result remains respectable without pretending the same project did not win locally first.

An employee’s Rising Star award deserves celebration without being nailed to a product-innovation claim.

When genuine achievements are buried beneath this much cosmetic packing shit, the packaging becomes the story.

Cepac’s Innovation Record Goes Through The Fucking Shredder

After removing the marketing lacquer, the awards page looks rather different.

Cepac did win real awards.

However, it entered commercial competitions that charged fees, offered multiple categories and produced several grades of recognition.

POPAI required payment before judging and awarded gold, silver or bronze to every nominated entry.

The Jameson display won local gold, gained eligibility for a second competition and returned through a $409–$509 international entry process.

At least twelve distinctions appear connected to Pernod Ricard brands.

Two headline innovation awards belong to the same Chiller Pack.

A single Claude’s Bistro project produced gold and Best in Show.

One employee award helps support a product-innovation narrative.

A highly commended result sits beside winners.

Several entries omit the product or medal.

FSC-certified board somehow wandered into a carbon-offsetting claim without an identified offset.

Finally, Cepac’s Harry Potter award does not match the company’s own contemporary list of two nominations and two different winners.

That is not a pristine record of invention.

It is trophy-accounting bullshit in a dinner jacket.

Every ceremony becomes a new asset.

Repeat projects collect fresh depreciation schedules.

Commendations become cabinet furniture.

Employees become products.

Customers become innovation streams.

A fish box wins twice and is expected to carry the research department until retirement without a pension or a fucking thank-you.

Together We Achieve More Fucking Trophies

Cepac’s slogan says:

“Together we achieve more.”

Apparently so.

Pernod Ricard supplies the alcohol brands.

Retailers supply the floor space.

Award organisers supply the categories.

Cepac supplies the entry forms, cardboard and dinner guests.

Marketing supplies the fucking amnesia and quietly deletes the denominators.

Together, they can turn one Jameson display into local and international gold. One seafood container becomes two innovation awards. One employee enters the product cabinet. One highly commended gin stand becomes part of the victory wall.

Meanwhile, Harry Potter receives an award that Cepac’s own 2022 announcement cannot locate.

Perhaps that is the real innovation.

Not the box.

Not the print.

And not the waterproof liner.

The breakthrough lies in corporate multiplication: the ability to pass the same handful of projects through enough ceremonies, categories and web-page headings that a collection of trade awards begins to resemble an industrial revolution instead of a self-entered corporate circle-jerk with a seating plan.

Thirty Trophies And One Missing Fucking Receipt

Cepac wants visitors to see relentless excellence.

TCAP sees a commercial awards ecosystem with the price list ripped off and stuffed under the fucking carpet.

Cepac wants readers to see international recognition.

TCAP sees an existing local gold winner paying for another turn beneath the lights.

Cepac points towards a history of innovative corrugated products.

TCAP finds retail displays, print awards, an employee, a commendation, a poultry box and one exhausted seafood container doing all the fucking overtime.

Cepac says FSC board helped offset carbon.

The page identifies no offsetting scheme.

Cepac puts Harry Potter beneath its 2022 gold-and-bronze heading.

Its own contemporary reporting names AG Barr and Absolut as the two winners.

The company may manufacture excellent cardboard.

It may employ talented operators.

Some awards appear thoroughly deserved.

Yet the boast page remains a cheap corporate wank chapel built from expensive plaques, selective memory and enough Pernod Ricard scenery to stock the drinks trolley at the fucking Last Supper.

One fish box won twice.

One Jameson pub needed two ceremonies.

Twelve distinctions came from the same drinks cabinet.

An employee became evidence of product innovation.

A commendation dressed itself as a victory and hoped nobody checked the name tag.

Harry Potter acquired a trophy without troubling Cepac’s nomination record.

Then some corporate genius typed “catagories,” stood beneath the gold-foil altar and declared the company best in the fucking business.

It is not a clean innovation record.

It is cardboard accounting with its balls polished, its invoices hidden and a blood-red ribbon tied around the bullshit.

The trophies may be real.

The achievements may be respectable.

The page presenting them is still an overfed, under-explained monument to corporate self-abuse.

The shrine is full of shit.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources