Magazine: Hungarian Product Grand Prize: 2016 is the year of changes

The winners of the Hungarian Product Grand Prize (HPGP) competition were announced for the 19th time in 2016. On 6 September, in the Parliament building 66 products of 60 companies were rewarded with the right to use the Certification Trademark free of charge for a year. Those businesses and people can be honoured with the prize that create high added value in both commercial and social sense. An independent body of experts makes recommendations and HPGP’s competition council decides which of the nominees are worthy of the prize.

The main objective of the HPGP scheme is to help the winning products enter new markets, and to assist consumers in making buying choices. When making their decision (in several rounds), the HPGP jury gave extra points for using energy saving and environmentally friendly solutions, and paid special attention to the advantages offered to consumers and to creative ideas. For the first time in the history of the programme, Hungarian businesses located in neighbouring countries could also enter the competition.

Ildikó Kiss Károlyné informed our magazine that this year they changed the structure of the HPGP competition council that operates the whole reward scheme: one of the council’s members is a former competitor, an ex-participant who can give useful advice to those taking part in the programme now. This year the competition council’s verdict was that 92 percent of the nominees deserved bearing the Certification Trademark. 33 percent of the winners are Budapest-based and 63 percent come from 16 counties of Hungary. 4 percent of HPGP winners are located in neighbouring countries. It is noteworthy that in the 19-year history of the programme 96.5 percent of trademark users decided to continue using it (after the first year trademark users have to pay a fee).