24 seats. Two days at Capital C with the people who actually run the packaging industry, on a problem a real brand has failed to solve. Students and PhDs pay nothing, including travel and a bed. Everyone leaves with the work published under their name.
And the prize is real money.
€2,030 to the winning team, split in equal shares with the student included, no conditions attached. The number is the deadline rather than a typo. Then AmPhi Labs puts an AI/ML engineer on the winning project with a €5,000 build fund behind them, and takes the hack to a working prototype demoed to the brand whose brief you answered.
One of our engineers sits in every team: data, code, CAD, rapid prototyping. They compete for nothing and take no share of a prize. You direct, they build. If your idea needs a model trained, a scraper written or a part printed at midnight, that stops being the reason you cannot try it.
You work with the stack we use on client projects, on a real problem, with someone who uses it daily sitting next to you. The prompts, the workflow and the judgement about where models help and where they waste your afternoon go home with you, into your thesis or into Monday.
A brand owner who knows the cost per unit, a converter, a substrate or coating specialist, a designer. People you would otherwise meet one at a time over a career, sitting at your table for two days because they need the answer as much as you do.
If you already work in packaging, bring the thing that keeps failing. The tracks come from real assortments, and the people around you are exactly the ones your company cannot get on a call. Thirty hours is short enough that nobody defends a budget line.
All six solutions, the three head-to-head comparisons and the rubric go into the H/Pack for 2030 Report in December, free to read, after a demo floor of roughly 150 people and the trade press on the Friday. Portfolio work, not a certificate.
Six teams of four, on three tracks, two teams per track. Every team crosses at least three organisations, and one of our engineers is embedded in each.
You work at a brand or a retailer and you know the assortment, the line speed and what procurement will sign. Any level, as long as the problem is yours.
Structural, packaging, graphic or service. Most of what the 2030 rules change is form, material and how a pack reads on a shelf. You are the creative engine of the team.
Substrate, converter, press and digital print, ink and coating, labels, recyclability assessment or regulatory. Matched to the brief you are working.
Enrolled at TU Delft, Wageningen or the UvA, any discipline. You do the making, and you ask the question nobody in the room has asked in fifteen years.
Both work. Apply on your own and we place you in a team where your role is missing. Apply as a team you have already formed and it enters as it is, provided the mix is genuine: at least three different organisations, no two direct competitors inside it, the four roles covered between you, and one seat left open for a student or PhD, which we fund and fill. If a role is missing we fill that too. Teams drawn from a single employer do not qualify, because the whole point is the people you would not normally get.
Five minutes. We read every one. Student and PhD places are decided in September, industry and design seats are matched to tracks as partners confirm, and everyone hears back either way.
Now to 15 September. We read applications as they arrive and answer the ones with questions in them.
15 September. Go decision. If the event does not run, you hear from us that week and that is the end of it.
Late September. Briefs published. Student and PhD places confirmed, travel and beds booked by us.
October. Teams announced, dossiers sent, and a call with your team before the day.
Six student and PhD places, funded. Eighteen industry and design seats, most attached to a partner or a challenge owner. If you are a student, apply. If you are in the industry and no company is putting you forward, apply anyway and say so in the last box: we hold seats back for exactly that.
Not for the student seat. Teams are built so that the packaging knowledge is already in the room, and the student seat exists precisely to bring a discipline and a set of questions the industry people do not have. Materials science, industrial design, data science, food technology, supply chain, chemistry and mechanical engineering have all been useful in this format. Curiosity and comfort with new tools count for more than years served.
Students and PhD candidates pay nothing at all: no fee, travel within Europe covered, and a bed in Amsterdam on the Thursday night. Industry and design seats come attached to a partner package or a challenge owner place, so your employer usually covers it. If you want a seat and neither route fits you, apply anyway and say so.
You do, all four of you equally. We take no licence, partners get none, and nothing is assigned to anybody. The only thing we ask is permission to name, describe and photograph the work so we can publish the December report. If your team wins, the build fund takes the project further and what you made stays yours throughout.
No. Hard close at 21:00 on the Thursday, doors again at 08:00 on the Friday, tools down at 12:30. The 30 hours are the window rather than the working time, and the constraint is deliberate. Teams that sleep make better decisions on the Friday morning, and the demo floor is the part that matters.
The event runs in English because the teams are international, but half the room will be working in a second language and nobody is judged on fluency. The rubric scores regulatory impact, feasibility, commercial viability, circularity evidence and how the team worked. Not grammar.
Apply above, or if you would rather ask something first, email us and a person answers.
