Jack Daniel’s x McLaren Halo MK1 wins Limited Edition Packaging of the Year, following Hunter Luxury’s victory with the Hendrick’s Whimsical Watering Can in 2025.
October 8, 2026 — Hunter Luxury has secured back-to-back victories at the UK Packaging Awards after the Jack Daniel’s x McLaren Halo MK1 Limited Edition was named Limited Edition Packaging of the Year 2026.
The win follows Hunter Luxury’s victory in the same category in 2025 with the Hendrick’s Whimsical Watering Can, giving the luxury packaging specialist consecutive titles for two strikingly different projects.
While the Hendrick’s pack turned a limited-edition presentation into a playful, functional object designed to live beyond the bottle, Halo MK1 uses precision engineering and mechanical interaction to create a collector-grade experience inspired by Formula 1.
The original Halo MK1 design concept was created by the Jack Daniel’s Design team at Brown-Forman as part of the brand’s partnership with McLaren, taking structural inspiration from Formula 1’s Halo safety device. Hunter Luxury was tasked with bringing that creative vision to life, leading the development, engineering, prototyping and manufacture required to turn it into a collector-grade presentation case for Jack Daniel’s.
At its centre is a concealed push-button mechanism beneath the McLaren emblem. A single press releases the bottle from its sculpted cradle in one smooth, controlled movement, turning the reveal itself into part of the experience.
Behind that apparently effortless interaction lies an extraordinarily complex piece of packaging engineering. More than 50 custom components, eight materials and eight manufacturing processes come together within the finished structure, while more than 20 CAD iterations, supported by digital motion studies and physical prototyping, were used to refine its geometry, balance and release behaviour.
Even the acoustic response of the mechanism was engineered to give the interaction a softer, more premium character.
The finished structure combines extruded and die-cast aluminium, injection-moulded components, carbon fibre-effect detailing and Alcantara-inspired lining, with an electrophoretic coating creating its uniform matte exterior.
Paul Hamilton, Head of Sales & Marketing at Hunter Luxury, said: “To win Limited Edition Packaging of the Year for a second consecutive year is incredibly special, particularly because the two winning projects could hardly be more different.
“The Hendrick’s Whimsical Watering Can was playful, surprising and deliberately unconventional. Halo MK1 is an exercise in precision engineering, bringing together more than 50 components within a finished structure designed to deliver one seemingly effortless moment.
“What connects them is the ambition behind them. Both began with ambitious creative ideas, and with Halo MK1, that original design concept came from the Jack Daniel’s Design team. Our role was to find a way to make that vision work in the real world without compromising what made it special.
“To be recognised in the same category two years running is a fantastic endorsement of the team, our collaborators and the level of trust our clients place in us.”
The original Halo MK1 design concept was conceived by the Jack Daniel’s Design team to move beyond the conventions of a traditional limited-edition presentation case and become an object with a desirability and permanence of its own.
Sam Gardner, Senior Art Director at Brown-Forman Global Design, said: “There was a point when it stopped feeling like a case or a gift pack and started to feel like a piece of sculpture. That was when I realised people weren’t going to hide this away in a cupboard. They were going to treat it like a centrepiece.
“So many brand collaborations can end up feeling like two logos have simply been placed on an existing format. We wanted to genuinely share the DNA of Jack Daniel’s and McLaren to create something neither brand could have made on its own.
“My hope is that, 20 years from now, a collector can look at Halo MK1 on a shelf and still see it as a moment when we got that balance right. If it still feels striking and relevant, then we’ve done our job.”
The UK Packaging Awards victory continues a remarkable awards run for Halo MK1, which has also won the Luxury Drinks category at the 2026 London Packaging Week Innovation Awards.
To learn more about Hunter Luxury and its award-winning portfolio, visit http://www.hunterluxury.com.
