Label Force has been awarded best flexo colour printer in the world, after winning the category in the World Label Awards. The WA based business took the award for its John West Calamari labels.
Two other Australian label printers won Honorable Mentions in the global contest, with judging taking place on the eve of LabelExpo Europe, with Multi-Colour Australia taking two awards, one for Offset Wine/Spirits and the other for Digital Wine/Spirits, while Label House Australia was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Combination Line category.
Kiwi label printers took a remarkable five awards out of the 22 on offer, with Auckland based PanPrint winning both the Offset Line category and in Offset Wine/Spirits where it shared the award, while Rapid Labels took the Flexo Line and the Combination Line. Wellington based Gravire Packaging won the Gravure category.
The World Label Awards (WLA) are produced by the L9 group of international label. The L9 is an alliance of global label associations formed to jointly formulate policies and collecting strategic information of global interest to the worldwide label industry.
The current class structure includes 22 classes covering all the principal printing processes and market applications. The results are listed in class order with the Winners announced first followed by the Honourable Mention (HM) awards.
All of the L9 label associations are invited, each year, to submit entries for the World Label Awards. This ensures that the competition has an international flavour. Representatives from the Indian Label Association (LMAI) were taking part for the first time in several years. Other associations involved in the 2017 competition included FINAT (Europe), TLMI (USA), JFLP (Japan), FPLMA (Australia), SALMA (New Zealand) and PEIAC (China).
In order to be considered for entry in this prestigious competition a label converter must first have won an award in their local association’s competition as this is the only route to entry. Each L9 association is permitted to submit one entry in each class, entries from individual converters are not accepted.
Winning an award in the WLA competition is highly valued throughout the worldwide label fraternity signalling that the label converter has achieved real excellence in label production. The awards not only reflect the achievements of the production departments involved in producing the label, they are also used as a valuable marketing tool
The jury spends a considerable time examining and debating the technical and aesthetic features of each label including converting and finishing technology. “Never will a label have been examined in such detail, even by the converter’s QC department. We expect a high standard of printing at this level and we also look for the quality of the design of the label” comments Tony White, chairman of the judging panel. “We continue to be surprised by the quality of the entries year on year” he continues.
The judges for the 2017 competition included Tony White (FINAT) Chair, Mike Buystedt (TLMI) Vice Chairman, Harveer Sahni (LMAI), Tony Wheeler (SALMA), Andrew Maxwell (FPLMA), Mr Masaaki Yoshitake (JFLP) and Ms Jean Li (PEIAC).
This is the fifth year that the L9 World label Awards Association has included 5 additional awards representing the “Best of the Best” entries from the principal printing processes selected during the judging process. The awards will be presented at the Tarsus Global Awards event which will be held during Labelexpo 2018 in Chicago in September 2018. The winners were selected from the winning entries in the L9 World label Awards competition from the following classes: Flexography, Letterpress, Offset Litho, Combination Printing, Digital Printing. The plaques will be presented and the winners revealed at the awards ceremony and are perceived as the “Oscars of the Oscars” of the international label industry.
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