16 Mar 2026 Obituary: Gill Loubser – trade publishing legend (1943-2025)
On Dec 4, 2025, food/packaging/pharma trade publishing doyenne, Gill Loubser, passed away – here’s an obituary on this legendary lady, published in the magazine she co-founded, Packaging & Print Media (PPM)…
South Africa’s packaging community learned on 4 December 2025 that Gill Loubser – co-founder of PPM, editor, mentor and guiding presence in the industry – passed away at the age of 82.
The news rippled across boardrooms, print floors and WhatsApp groups alike, bringing a shared sense of loss and gratitude for a remarkable woman who helped define an entire industry.
For more than 40 years, Gill did more than chronicle the packaging and print sector – she animated it. She brought shape to its milestones, discipline to its technical conversations, dignity to its debates and humanity to its stories.
Every issue she edited, person she interviewed and conference she chaired bore her unmistakable imprint: precision, empathy and an unshakeable commitment to truth.
Before becoming an institution, Gill achieved a first. In 1976, she was appointed the first female editor of the industrial technical journals under the Review umbrella, a role that demanded resilience, quick wit and an instinct for navigating spaces where she was often the only woman.
She mastered it with quiet assertiveness and a scholar’s appetite for understanding the science behind the machines, materials and minds shaping South African industry. Her curiosity became her lifelong compass.
It guided her to co-found Packaging & Print Media (PPM), which quickly became a trusted voice in the sector. It carried her into leadership roles within the Institute of Packaging SA (IPSA), including national chairman, and placed her on the global map, where she represented Africa as the continent’s sole member of the International Packaging Press Organisation (IPPO) for more than four decades.
Gill received numerous awards in recognition of her work, including Packaging Achiever (1995), Honorary Life Membership of FTASA (1996), fellow of IPSA (1998) and the prestigious World Packaging Organisation (WPO)’s Lifetime Achievement in Packaging Award (2019).
In 2018, the industry ensured her legacy would outlive print cycles by renaming Packaging SA’s top honour the Gill Loubser Packaging Achiever Award.
Gill’s truest legacy, however, lives in people
Those who met Gill remembered her attention, generosity and uncanny ability to make any conversation feel important, whether it was about flexographic plate making or someone’s new grandchild.
At home and in the industry, Gill treated everyone with the same curiosity and respect. Within the PPM team, Gill was the heartbeat of the magazine: its conscience, fiercest critic, proudest ambassador and most loyal mentor.
She built a newsroom culture defined by rigour, curiosity and humanity. She showed generations of journalists that packaging stories were never ‘just technical’ – they were about people, progress, responsibility and innovation.
As the packaging and print community mourns her loss, we marvel at the fullness of her life: the friendships she nurtured, the careers she launched, the publications she guided and the bridges she built between South Africa and the world.
She brought humanity to an industry built on materials, machinery and metrics. Gill leaves behind a legacy that continues to inspire.
Rest gently, Gill. Thank you for the ink you spilled, the stories you preserved, the people you lifted and the standard you set. We will carry your voice forward – because it shaped who we are.
You can read the stream of tributes in the February 2026 issue of PPM Magazine here….
My Gill Loubser tribute – by Brenda Neall, editor and publisher of FOODStuff SA & DRINKStuff SA
Gill was a long-time mentor to me in my time as editor of Food Review magazine (1999-2007). Our connection began in 1999, after I’d had a sabbatical of some six months overseas visiting far-flung siblings. I arrived back in Cape Town, jobless, and rather clueless as to my next move.
As it happened, an old work colleague and friend, Penny Haw, (now a renowned SA writer of historical novels) was doing a locum at National Publishing and she whispered in my ear that SA Food Review magazine was looking for a new editor. She thought the job had my name on it, especially as I had been, for brief period, some years prior, the editor of an opposition food trade mag, SA Food Industries, in Jo’burg.
I wasn’t so sure, but I gave Gill a ring, and luckily, she decided I might be right for the job, and I was hired in flash, such was her encouraging trust in me.
And so began a long journey in the FMCG foodbev sectors. How lucky I’ve been to cover food – and Gill gave me the chance to enter this world of wonder. Everyone understands the appeal of food and relates to it in multiple ways. My now 27-year journey, reporting on how it’s made: made safe, made affordable, tasty, healthy, available, varied and abundant has been fascinating.
There is likely no other sector as vibrantly blessed with amazing innovation and change as food and beverage.
Gill left me to own devices but was always there to guide and advise. She was, in a nutshell, a brilliant editor and taught us juniors her astute style: YOU NEVER USE CAPS, don’t use ten words when six will do, be precise and concise, dump the eye-irritating period/full stops, avoid repetition, be unashamedly curious and don’t be embarrassed to ask any questions, and most importantly, let your creativity and personality, opinions and humour shine through your words.
This experience, under her astute, kind, funny, forgiving eye, gave me the confidence to step out on my own and set up a digital food trade mag, and which I still do, here, today, 18 years on.
What a legacy she gifted me… merci bien, dearest Gilly!
