Pride In Print Awards Label Printing Section Senior Judge Greer Wilcox says the industry sector is increasingly showing its command of a difficult printing art.
“Four years ago the quality of entries submitted, when viewed under a magnifying glass, were often out of register and there were lots of imperfections,” says Mr Wilcox.
“Most definitely, more entries this year were of a very high standard. All of the people who enter are now into the mode — they want to do better and better each year.”
Furthermore, Mr Wilcox says label printers are increasingly utilising impressive new technologies.
“In previous years, wet and dry offset processes that were available from label press manufacturers had been contemplated by New Zealand label printing companies, but there always seemed to be difficulties that never seemed to be fully resolved with those processes.
“Finally, those stumbling blocks were addressed by press manufacturers and thus gained the confidence of Australasian label printing companies. We are now seeing increasing uses of this technology in both New Zealand and Australia.
“Also, ultra-violet (UV) flexographic printing technology has now surpassed rotary letterpress in print quality in many cases. The ink makers are producing inks of a much stronger pigment than the traditional solvent or water-based inks and photo-polymer plates can also be made directly from the desktop without the need for film (direct-to-plate).
“Generally, to the public, a wine label produced from a rotary letterpress machine would look fine. But when you start scrutinising through a magnifying glass, you could see halos around the letters and a slight blurring around the edges.
“With the latest offset and UV flexographic processes, the quality is superb in comparison — it is almost as perfect as a photographic process.”
Pride In Print Awards Manager Sue Archibald says it is pleasing to see the continual rise of standards in all sectors of the printing industry.
“The Pride In Print Awards provides an opportunity for those in the industry to measure the quality of their work,” says Ms Archibald.
“Our label printers are producing work of a very high standard and the Awards enables them to showcase that to the print-buying market and say ‘look at what we are producing, look at our quality and look at our innovation’.
“When a partnership is established between print-buyers and their printers, something really special can be achieved which ultimately boosts the image, presentation and saleability of their product.”
Another interesting trend Mr Wilcox notes in the label printing category this year is the large number of entries that came from jobs printed in “extremely small quantities”.
“To produce a run of 2000, 3000 or 5000 from great big multi-million dollar presses is amazing. I wouldn’t have thought it was viable, but that proves to me the world says print runs are becoming shorter, quality required is greater, delivery times are becoming faster and everything is moving towards the ‘just-in-time’ concept.”
Having fulfilled his four-year term as a Pride In Print Awards judge, Mr Wilcox is following the mandatory path of stepping down. However, he leaves his judging role believing his industry sector is in good health.
“Over the last four years, the Pride In Print team has tried to educate label printers and they have improved a little each year. Last year we held seminars to really drum home what they should be looking for and some of the judges went along and discussed where the previous entries had gone wrong.
“For one thing, we as judges thought what might have been happening is that maybe somebody else in the company was submitting the entries instead of the printers themselves who have produced the job and know what is good.
“Now I think our label printers have been educated and have an understanding. There is a real sense of achievement coming through and I think it is helping the industry overall.”
This year’s Pride In Print Awards will be staged and winners announced at the Rotorua Sportsdrome on the May 20.
For further information on the Pride In Print Awards contact:
Sue Archibald — Awards Manager 021 663 881
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