An estimated 1000 will attend the event to see who takes “gold” and the overall Supreme Award from all sectors of print, ranging from screen printing to labels, annual reports to packaging.
Entry levels for the Awards maintained the high level set last year at about the 900 mark, but more companies have participated.
Pride In Print awards manager Sue Archibald says this was because the Pride In Print Awards are increasingly getting industry wide support. “We are finding that a greater mix of companies are entering, indicating that the strategy of spreading the Awards’ net wider through the print and packaging entries is paying dividends.
“We now have 11 categories ranging from gravure and flexo to packaging, web, screen printing, sheetfed, digital, business forms and specialist processes, as well as ‘industry development’ categories such as an environmental award and export award.
“This greater coverage has succeeded in capturing more interest among all the diverse industry sectors, encouraging entries from smaller printers as well as large, and from provincial firms as well as the major city operations.”
Convenor of Judges Grant Letfus, whose team of 64 specialist judges took three days to sift through entries, says the standards in certain areas reflected the amount of investment the print and packaging industries had put into new equipment.
“There has been significant investment in importing top-of-the range machinery in the last few years. This is being shown in some of the sheetfed magazine work we are seeing, where the quality is the highest-ever in seen in Pride In Print. It appears printing firms are being rewarded for their investment.”
Mr Letfus says there had been a general rise in standards across most print categories, with a marked rise in quality reported in the web offset category for daily and weekly newspapers, and corrugated packaging also consistently high.
“It appears the drive for quality embodied in Pride In Print is reflecting back to the people on the print floor and they are realising what needs to be done to achieve excellence in the final product.”
The Pride In Print Awards are backed by principal patrons Heidelberg New Zealand, Nova Inks and Chemicals, Spicers Paper and Fuji Xerox, and 30 industry sponsors
