Multiple award recognition has recognised a Wellington company’s commitment to its investment in the industry.
Greg Chapman, managing director at Petone-based Gravure Packaging Limited (GPL), expresses pride in team’s achievements, saying the company’s big returns in this year’s Pride In Print Awards reinforces the firm’s commitment to investing in world-class people, equipment and processes. He says, “That commitment is enabling us to successfully compete in the global packaging marketplace and continue to win valuable export work.”
The company achieved an unprecedented number of wins at this year’s Pride In Print, earning category and process awards, five gold medals and a highly commended citation. Its category award-winning Ausgreen light-protection shrink sleeve features GPL’s own environmentally-friendly Blizzard technology.
Chapman says, “In applications where protection from light is required, brand managers have traditionally used opaque plastic Pet bottles and TetraPaks, which are unfortunately not recycled in Australia and New Zealand, and so end up in landfills.
“Our goal was to eliminate this compromise and, following three years’ development, in 2017 we launched Blizzard.
“Sandwiched into the shrink sleeve structure, this technology acts as a selective light protection barrier. It provides brand managers with an excellent, bright and colourful aesthetic, a good light barrier and, in concert with the use of transparent PET bottles, an end product that can now be recycled.”
While not a new technology, light-blocking shrink sleeves has received a fresh look with the new type of coating sandwiched in the Blizzard structure. Chapman says, “The innovation behind it is very smart. There’s some science to making a light-protection shrink sleeve good enough, with less ink, for use on clear bottles.
“To date, our solution has provided the opportunity for 7.6 million plastic bottles to be recycled and, due to the technical benefits of the process, has comparably used both 2500kg less ink and 200,000kg less Titanium Dioxide.”
The company also won a process award for its Kiwi Farm work. Chapman says his firm managed to replicate the label through innovative GravureHD cylinders developed over the past two years. He says, “The photography capturing the freshness of the kiwifruit and leaves was paramount to the Kiwi Farm juice brand, which undertook a major rebrand in 2017. Our cylinders have replicated the finest details of the leaves and even kiwifruit hairs, which was previously unachievable.”
He believes the ultra-high-definition being produced by the GravureHD cylinders, developed in partnership with the firm’s ink supplier and cylinder engraver and required investment in new printing press equipment, far exceeds the industry standard. He says, “Furthermore, while not only enhancing the high-quality imagery that gravure is known for, this advancement delivers two significant environmental benefits — we need less overall volume of ink and there are serious power savings to produce a given job.”
He adds that the innovation shown in such developments as Blizzard and GravureHD provide GPL with industry-specific advantages to ensure both the firm and the gravure process remains ahead of the pack.
GPL also recently received the award for the world’s best gravure process label in 2017 by the L9 group of international label associations. A shrink sleeve produced for a Chobani yoghurt 170g tub saw GPL win the Gravure Class in the L9’s prestigious World Label Awards (WLA) competition, colloquially known as the technical Oscars of the global label industry.
GPL’s full list of Pride In Print wins this year:
- Category Award (Industry Development and Creativity, Sustainable Print For Tomorrow’s World) — Ausgreen, 1L UHT Milk
- Process Award (Gravure) — Kiwi Farm, Kiwifruit Juice
- Gold Medal (Labels) — Kiwi Farm, Kiwifruit Juice
- Gold Medal (Packaging) — Whittakers, 3 Pack Coconut Slabs
- Gold Medal (Business Print/Export) — Chobani, Chinese New Year Special Edition
- Gold Medal (Industry Development and Creativity) — Bayer, Berocca Tropical Orange
- Gold Medal (Industry Development and Creativity) — Ausgreen, 1L UHT Milk
- Highly Commended (Business Print/Export) — Resmed, AirTouch Lidding
