Judges’ convenor Grant Letfus says that judging between entries became more and more difficult as the 903 entries were narrowed down into gold then into supreme award candidates and finalists.While the final results will be announced at the awards dinner in Christchurch in June, Letfus says judges have never seen anything as close as this year’s entries with standards so high that deciding on the merits of entries in totally different categories became very difficult.“In the end judges had to be anonymously polled an extra two times in a bid to separate the top contenders for the Supreme Award.”
He says it is a wonderful endorsement of the rationale of Pride In Print, which was established in 1993 to promote excellence in print and discourage buyers taking work away from New Zealand.
At that time many buyers of print were purchasing offshore and the initial focus of the campaign was to raise the profile of the NZ print industry to buyers.
“This year we saw examples of NZ companies winning work from overseas in competition with Asian businesses. It is heartening to see that NZ print standards are rising to the extent that we can compete in the global marketplace, Letfus adds.
He says the competition’s high standards also reflect the amount of investment in new plant and technology throughout the industry in New Zealand.
“People understand we have to be smarter and more adept, and are investing in the machinery to allow us to achieve that. There are heartening signs for the NZ print industry.”
Entries were also up again this year topping 900 compared to 889 last year, and judges reported improvements in standards across the board, with a marked rise in quality reported in the web offset category for daily and weekly newspapers.
New categories were introduced in case binding and wine labels, and each attracted a solid number of entries, indicating that the awards’ strategy of spreading the net wide through the print and packaging sectors is paying dividends, he adds.
“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,” says awards manager Sue Archibald.
