The „Packaging of the Year 2019“ award was presented to Melitta Group Management GmbH & Co. KG. On the occasion of the 22nd German Packaging Dialogue, the jury decided: „Melitta“ has established a global standard with its filter cartridges. With this award, the jury recognised both the quality of the historic brand design and the courage to be self-similar that has been demonstrated over decades.
From blotting paper to medal of honour
Worldwide, Germany is considered the motherland of classic filter coffee. Exactly 111 years ago Melitta Bentz (1873-1950), a 35-year-old housewife and mother at the time, was looking for an efficient method of making coffee. To get rid of the annoying coffee grounds, she experimented with Blotting paper sheets, which she had taken from her children's exercise books.
The filter was initially replaced by a ordinary tin can, The bottom of which she had perforated with nails. The coffee tasted so good that the simple technique became very popular among her friends. So Melitta Bentz decided to commercialise her idea and had the technology patented.
On 20 June 1908, the Imperial Patent Office granted her utility model protection for her round filter with prefabricated filter paper. This enabled Melitta Bentz to have the company „M. Bentz“ entered in the commercial register of her home town of Dresden with a small equity capital of 72 pfennigs.
The young entrepreneur's husband, Johannes Emil Hugo Bentz, was employed as a department manager in a Dresden department stores„ until he set up his own business in 1906. At the time, it was not a matter of course that he allowed himself to be infected by his emancipated wife's idea. Together with his sons Willy and Horst, he was one of the first employees of the young “start-up" company, as we would call it today.
When the much-acclaimed „International Hygiene Exhibition“ was held in Dresden in 1911, of all places, the filter was able to be used here (as well as at the exhibition organised by the Saxon Innkeepers' Association). Gold and silver medals of honour to win. The idea had become established.
And the business grew so quickly that the small four-room flat in Dresden, where the family lived and worked, had to be given up by 1914. Not even the world war, in which Melitta's husband was called up to the front, could stop the economic success. When real coffee became a scarce commodity, the entrepreneur kept her head above water by producing cardboard boxes.
When suitable production facilities could no longer be found in Dresden, the company moved to Minden in East Westphalia in 1929. Here, 80 employees were now employed, working in a double-shift system.
An icon of the brand world
Over the past 111 years, the „Melitta“ brand has significantly characterised, determined and changed the appearance of the coffee filter. Completely Different models made of porcelain, ceramic and metal were developed here and launched on the market. The filter paper was also constantly developed further and has become a globally distributed branded article that has established itself as a standard.
It is thanks to the company's clever business policy that you always have the Recognisability of „Melitta“ filter bags had in mind. The market presence was therefore sustainable and highly consistent.
Right from the start, the innovative product entered the market as a genuine branded article whose „Self-similarity“, as the experts call it, bears witness to a exemplary persistence was born. The combination of red and green characterised the iconic brand from its earliest beginnings.
To this day, the brand identity of this classic brand has only evolved in nuances and under very careful management. The green background of the packaging body has never been abandoned. The red brand label evolved from a colour-contrasting wraparound band, which we first encounter in a design from 1925.
The jury is impressed by the quality and Courage to continue the historic brand design of „Melitta“ filter bags. What is impressive is the consistent validity of the design language, which continues to be used without compromise.
In honour of their role as „Classics“ of international packaging design and at the same time in recognition of the proven courage to be self-similar, „Melitta“ filter bags are honoured with the „Packaging of the Year“ award 2019 in the 111th year of the brand's existence.
Source: Melitta Group
