Pmmi Education & Training Foundation

Grants and scholarships are provided to students of qualified technical schools and universities, and to employees of the packaging machinery manufacturers institute's member companies, for completion of packaging machinery coursework or ancillary courses. Over the past 26 years, pmmi has provided more than $3.5 million in scholarship funding through the foundation and supporting scholarship funds.

Incorporating challenges at 30 exhibitor booths, the foundation-sponsored "amazing packaging race" pits classmates against each other in a competition designed to familiarize students with the packaging and processing industries, as well as breaks down the wall between industry and education. Teams made up of four students, each from a different school, raced from booth to booth for more than 3 hours. Performatin challenges that ranged from shooting videos about industry education to changing pack patterns on a case packer, challenges were assigned a point value based on the difficulty of the task and how long it should take to complete it.