Packaging's agenda has been set in the last year by M&A, the green lobby and more than a dash of controversy. We take a light-hearted look back at the year and hand out the medals, trophies and prizes for the stories that shaped it.

CELEBRITY OF THE YEAR
Winner: James May
He might come across as mild-mannered, but Top Gear presenter James May, otherwise known as Captain Slow, was outraged by the Portman Group's suggestion that a bottle of BrewDog's Speedball beer could make him aggressive.

The Portman Group, which seeks to encourage the responsible promotion of alcoholic drinks, blacklisted the beer because its name had links to drug use - Speedball was also the name of the drug cocktail that killed Hollywood stars River Phoenix and John Belushi.

May and co-presenter Oz Clarke drank the beer, albeit from bottles in paper bags, when they visited the BrewDog microbrewery as part of their Oz and James drink to Britain series, aired on BBC2 in January.

In an angry outburst over the Portman ruling, May said: "The idea that this bottle of beer, or several of these bottles of beer, could somehow make me an aggressive person is patronising and actually insulting."

Runner-up: Lisa B
Model and actress Lisa B showed her support for glass packaging when she helped launch the sector's Choose Glass Week event. The model - best known for her turn as Hugh Grant's other woman in the film Bridget Jones's Diary - said that choosing glass was a "simple, effective way" to make a difference to the environment.

INVESTMENT OF THE YEAR
Winner: Can-Pack
It had been a full 20 years since a new canmaking plant opened in the UK when Can-Pack began production a year ago at its Scunthorpe facility. If you hadn't heard of Can-Pack at the time, that's probably little surprise - this was the Polish company's first major investment in western Europe, even though it is already a big cheese in the canmaking world in central and eastern Europe and has plants in the Middle East and India. Built on the promise of contracts from major brewers, the £40m factory can produce up to 1bn 44cl and 50cl cans a year on a single line. Capacity could be expanded to double that if and when a second line is installed. But perhaps the best thing about the factory is managing director Jerzy Laszcz. In an interview with Packaging News, he gave some of the best soundbites of the year: he likes to hire "factory animals", noted that British consumers are obsessed with saving money and said that there were "charming places in England" to visit on his weekends off - before hastily adding that it's just as much fun spending time in the factory. Priceless.

Runner-up: DS Smith
A very worthy runner-up, DS Smith spent £104m on buying and revamping a former Mondi mill in Kent to produce lightweight corrugated case material. Production started at the mill in January 2010.