Huhtamaki President and CEO Ralf K. Wunderlich has been named CEO of the Year 2026 in the Sustainable Packaging Industry by European CEO.

The recognition is real.

European CEO’s published 2026 awards list identifies Wunderlich as the winner in the sustainable-packaging category, while Huhtamaki says the award recognizes leadership in packaging innovation, sustainability and the development of solutions responding to changing customer, consumer and regulatory requirements.

But for anyone working inside flexible packaging, fiber packaging or foodservice packaging, an executive award is probably not the most useful part of this story.

The better question is:

What has actually changed inside Huhtamaki—and can those changes produce packaging that is simultaneously more circular, commercially competitive and profitable?

That is a considerably harder test than winning an award.

And there are now some numbers against which Wunderlich’s leadership can begin to be measured.

Wunderlich Has Been CEO for Less Than Two Years

Wunderlich became Huhtamaki’s President and CEO on January 15, 2025, succeeding Charles Héaulmé.

At the time, Huhtamaki’s board highlighted his experience in international packaging, organic growth and acquisitions, while the company’s existing 2030 strategy was already focused on sustainable packaging, profitable core businesses and operational competitiveness.

That timing is important.

Many of Huhtamaki’s sustainability objectives predate Wunderlich.

Its 2030 strategy, circular-packaging ambitions and innovation programmes were not created when he became CEO.

So it would be inaccurate to attribute the company’s entire sustainability direction to one executive.

What has changed more visibly during his tenure is how the company is trying to execute that strategy.

Huhtamaki has repeatedly emphasized three operating priorities:

growth through multiple levers, disciplined capital allocation, and accountability combined with faster execution.

That sounds like management language until it is connected with what has happened inside the organization.

Huhtamaki Has Been Moving Decisions Closer to Its Business Segments

One element highlighted in the award announcement is Huhtamaki’s decision to give teams closer to customers greater accountability.

That is not simply wording created for the award release.

Huhtamaki’s 2025 reporting shows that the company reorganized functions and shifted more execution responsibility toward its business segments.

During 2025, it aligned functions more closely with the segments, streamlined parts of the Global Executive Team and said the changes were designed to reduce organizational complexity and allow decisions to be made more quickly.

The company’s 2025 annual report describes the operating model in similar terms: segments were given greater execution responsibility while global functions increasingly operated as centers of expertise.

That organizational change matters in packaging more than it may appear.

A multinational packaging converter does not sell one standardized product into one global market.

Customer requirements differ by:

food category,

barrier requirement,

filling process,

shelf life,

sealing system,

recycling infrastructure,

regulation,

material availability,

and geography.

A flexible-packaging customer in India may not face the same commercial or recycling conditions as a foodservice customer in Germany or a molded-fiber customer in North America.

Centralized sustainability targets are necessary.

But implementation often has to happen much closer to the customer.

That appears to be the logic behind Huhtamaki’s organizational shift.

Flexible Packaging Gives Us a Harder Performance Measure

The most interesting evidence may be coming from Huhtamaki’s Flexible Packaging business.

In the second quarter of 2026, Flexible Packaging generated €344.8 million in sales, up 11% from €310.7 million a year earlier.

On a comparable basis, sales grew 14%.

Adjusted EBIT increased from €26.2 million to €37.4 million, a rise of 43%.

The segment’s adjusted EBIT margin reached 10.8%, compared with 8.4% in the second quarter of 2025.

Those numbers deserve more attention than the trophy.

They show that, at least during that quarter, Huhtamaki was not being forced to choose between growth and profitability in Flexible Packaging.

The company attributed the improvement to volume growth, cost savings, improved operations and the passing through of raw-material cost increases.

There is an important limitation.

One strong quarter does not establish a permanent turnaround.

Flexible Packaging had recorded negative comparable sales growth during several preceding quarters, including a 3% decline in the first quarter of 2026.

So it would be premature to say Huhtamaki has solved the economics of sustainable flexible packaging.

But the change is significant enough to watch.

Q2 suggests that the company’s operational restructuring is beginning to produce measurable results in one of the packaging industry’s most technically difficult segments.

Why Flexible Packaging Is the Important Test

Fiber packaging gets much of the public attention when sustainability is discussed.

It is visually easy to understand.

Paper and molded fiber immediately communicate a renewable-material story.

Flexible packaging is harder.

Flexible structures often need to deliver several functions simultaneously:

oxygen barrier,

moisture barrier,

grease resistance,

sealability,

printability,

mechanical strength,

puncture resistance,

product protection,

and high-speed converting performance.

Historically, meeting all those requirements often involved several different polymers, coatings, aluminum foil or other layers.

That can create significant end-of-life problems.

Moving toward mono-material PE, mono-material PP or simpler fiber structures can improve recyclability design, but only if the new structure still protects the product and runs properly through packing and filling equipment.

Huhtamaki’s blueloop portfolio includes flexible-packaging structures designed around mono-material PE and PP as well as fiber-based options.

That makes flexible packaging a useful measure of whether the company’s sustainability strategy is working commercially.

Producing an environmentally improved prototype is one achievement.

Producing it at scale, meeting customer specifications and earning an acceptable margin is another.

Sustainable Packaging Is Becoming an Execution Problem

This may be the real reason the organizational changes matter.

Five or ten years ago, sustainability strategies could often be presented primarily through targets.

Reduce emissions.

Increase renewable materials.

Improve recyclability.

Lower waste.

Those targets remain important.

But packaging companies are now entering the harder stage.

They have to industrialize the targets.

A new package has to work on an existing filling line.

It has to survive distribution.

It has to protect food.

It has to meet increasingly specific recyclability requirements.

The raw materials need to be available.

The converter must manufacture it economically.

The brand owner must be able to justify the cost.

And the consumer needs an actual collection and recycling route after use.

That is why giving operating businesses more responsibility can matter.

The next generation of sustainable packaging will not be created by sustainability departments alone.

It will require coordination between:

R&D,

material suppliers,

procurement,

manufacturing,

sales,

machine suppliers,

customers,

recyclers,

and regulators.

The closer those decisions can be made to the actual packaging application, the shorter the path from concept to industrial production can potentially become.

Huhtamaki Has Also Tightened Its Climate Targets

The company has continued to strengthen its formal sustainability programme during Wunderlich’s tenure.

In March 2026, Huhtamaki announced updated greenhouse-gas reduction targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

Among the targets, it committed to cutting absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse-gas emissions by 50.44% by 2030 from a 2022 base year.

Huhtamaki’s broader 2030 ambition also includes designing its products to be recyclable, compostable or reusable and increasing its use of renewable or recycled raw materials.

Those are substantial targets.

But there is another important reporting detail.

Huhtamaki says its target for products designed to be recyclable, compostable or reusable is measured based on revenue, while other circularity targets may use mass-based calculations.

The company also says it has developed technical criteria using principles from industry guidance including RecyClass for plastics and 4evergreen for fiber packaging.

That detail improves the credibility of the discussion because the word “recyclable” can otherwise become vague very quickly.

Still, design for recyclability does not automatically mean packaging will actually be collected and recycled in every market.

Huhtamaki itself acknowledges this distinction, noting that producing recyclable packaging is not sufficient without functioning collection and recycling systems.

That is an important position for the entire packaging industry.

The Award Should Not Be Treated as Independent Proof of Performance

There is also a journalistic distinction worth making.

European CEO’s 2026 awards page confirms that Wunderlich received the sustainable-packaging CEO title.

However, the published awards page reviewed for this article lists winners but does not explain sufficiently detailed judging criteria, scoring methodology or comparative performance data that would allow us to independently evaluate why one packaging executive ranked above another.

The award announcement supplied by Huhtamaki likewise focuses on the company’s own description of the recognition.

So the award should be reported as:

a leadership recognition from European CEO.

It should not be converted into a factual claim that Huhtamaki is therefore objectively the world’s most sustainable packaging company, or that Wunderlich is demonstrably the industry’s strongest CEO.

Those conclusions would require considerably more evidence.

Fortunately, Huhtamaki gives us something better to examine:

its operating results.

The Group-Level Picture Is More Complicated Than Flexible Packaging

Looking only at Flexible Packaging would also present an incomplete picture.

Huhtamaki’s total second-quarter sales were essentially flat at €1.009 billion, compared with €1.008 billion the year before.

Comparable group sales increased 2%.

Adjusted EBIT edged up just 1% to €103.7 million, while the adjusted EBIT margin moved from 10.2% to 10.3%.

Performance varied substantially between businesses.

Flexible Packaging and Fiber Packaging improved.

North America struggled.

Q2 North American sales fell 10% and adjusted EBIT declined 26%, with Huhtamaki citing lower sales and operational problems at several plants.

Foodservice Packaging also remained under pressure.

That matters because it prevents the award story from becoming a simplistic corporate celebration.

Huhtamaki is showing progress, but it is not operating without problems.

Wunderlich’s model of accountability and faster execution now has to work in the weaker businesses as effectively as it appears to have worked recently in Flexible Packaging.

Sustainability Without Cost Control Will Not Scale

This is where the industry’s sustainability discussion is changing.

Sustainability and profitability are sometimes described as competing objectives.

In packaging, that distinction is becoming less useful.

A recyclable flexible package that is too expensive for the customer will struggle to scale.

A fiber package that uses substantially more resources but provides inadequate protection may not improve the overall system.

A lower-carbon manufacturing process that destroys the converter’s return on capital will be difficult to replicate across dozens of plants.

And a lightweight package that reduces material but increases food waste can create another environmental problem.

Wunderlich made this connection explicit when Huhtamaki announced its updated climate targets, arguing that sustainability also needs to support long-term profitability and customer economics.

That is probably the more important leadership principle behind this story.

The next phase of sustainable packaging will be determined less by how ambitious the target sounds and more by whether companies can manufacture the solution repeatedly, profitably and at commercial scale.

Huhtamaki Is Also Putting Capital Discipline Into the Sustainability Discussion

Another phrase repeatedly used by Wunderlich is disciplined capital allocation.

That deserves attention.

Packaging companies are currently being asked to invest simultaneously in:

new material platforms,

recycling-compatible structures,

lower-carbon energy,

plant efficiency,

digital systems,

new converting equipment,

capacity expansion,

and regulatory compliance.

Capital is not unlimited.

Every sustainability project therefore competes with other investment opportunities.

Huhtamaki’s 2025 reporting says it refined its approach so sustainability projects are assessed alongside operational relevance and the technology needs of individual businesses.

That may sound less ambitious than announcing dozens of new projects.

In practice, it can be more important.

A global packaging company needs to decide where spending produces the largest measurable improvement instead of treating every site and technology identically.

Again, the success of that approach cannot yet be declared.

But it gives investors and customers a clearer benchmark against which to evaluate future projects.

The Real Leadership Test Comes Before 2030

Huhtamaki’s 2030 ambitions give the company four years.

That is not very long in industrial packaging.

A new material may require laboratory development.

Then pilot trials.

Then customer qualification.

Then line trials.

Then tooling or equipment changes.

Then commercial scale-up.

Meanwhile, regulations, resin prices, recycling infrastructure and customer specifications continue changing.

The remaining period to 2030 therefore turns sustainability from a strategy exercise into an execution race.

Huhtamaki must show that:

its recyclable structures gain meaningful commercial volumes,

its climate targets translate into actual emissions reductions,

its manufacturing network improves efficiency,

its weaker business units recover,

and its sustainability investments generate acceptable economic returns.

That is a much higher standard than receiving an executive award.

The Most Interesting Number Is 10.8%, Not the Award

If I had to choose one number from this story for the packaging industry to watch, it would not be the CEO award.

It would be 10.8%.

That was Huhtamaki Flexible Packaging’s adjusted EBIT margin in Q2 2026, up from 8.4% a year earlier.

Why does that matter?

Because flexible packaging sits directly in the middle of the industry’s hardest sustainability problem.

Converters are being asked to redesign multilayer structures, reduce material complexity, improve recyclability, respond to regulation and keep costs under control—all while maintaining barrier performance and protecting the product.

If Huhtamaki can continue expanding more circular flexible-packaging solutions while sustaining better margins, that would provide stronger evidence of successful sustainable-packaging leadership than any award.

If those margins fall as material transitions become more demanding, the challenge will look very different.

One quarter cannot answer that question.

But it gives us something measurable to follow.

An Award Marks Recognition. Execution Creates the Evidence.

Ralf Wunderlich deserves to be reported as European CEO’s 2026 CEO of the Year in the Sustainable Packaging Industry.

But the packaging industry should probably judge the next few years by a tougher standard.

Can Huhtamaki convert sustainability targets into products customers actually buy?

Can it simplify flexible packaging without sacrificing product protection?

Can it reduce carbon while preserving return on capital?

Can local accountability improve decision speed without fragmenting a global operating model?

And can the company reproduce the recent Flexible Packaging improvement across businesses that are still under pressure?

Those questions matter because the sustainable-packaging debate is moving beyond commitments.

The industry’s next winners will not necessarily be the companies with the longest sustainability reports or the most awards. They will be the converters that can make circular packaging work economically on an industrial production line.

For flexible-packaging producers and brand owners, that leads to a much more useful question:

When you evaluate a “sustainable” packaging supplier today, what carries more weight—the material claim, the recyclability data, or proof that the solution can run commercially at scale?

Last Updated on 09/09/2026 by Jota Machinery