This Year's Excellence Awards Competition Brought Out Best In Industry

Well, the London 2012 Summer Olympics are history and there were surely enough story lines to last the next 4-year cycle. So many contests, with so much at stake, over such a short period of time always emphasizes for me what I like most about sports—best captured by the old tag line in ABC's Wide World of Sports program from many years ago: "The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." Sports brings out the best in people (Luz Long, 1936 Olympics), and sometimes the worst (badminton, 2012).

We recently held our own version of the Olympics at packagePRINTING, our Excellence Awards competition. This year's competition brought out the best of what the package-printing industry has to offer. The quality of the entries from more than 40 companies was simply superior, and seemed to reflect what is happening throughout the industry—doing more with less and a focus on quality. Although the number of entries was down, the quality was fantastic, continuing the trend from the last several competitions. An indication of how well the participating companies performed is shown by the fact that 14 different companies took home at least one of the 25 first place awards. All of the companies that entered in this year's competition deserve the highest accolades for representing the highest standards in quality and artistic achievement.

Selecting the winning entries was hard work for the judges who again did a great job in fairly and expertly evaluating all entries. Peter Menzian, DuPont; Joe Hamway, Mark Andy; and Bob Waddington, Nazdar, are to be commended for the service they provide not only to packagePRINTING, but to the industry as a whole.

The Best of Show selection was especially challenging this year with four finalists taking the judges to the limit. Nitpicking was the word of the day and was stretched to the limit for the Best of Show award. As Hamway said, "It's incredibly difficult to find anything wrong." It reminded me of Michael Phelps' victory in the 2008 Olympics 100 meter butterfly when he commented that it was a good thing he hadn't clipped his finger nails before the event.

Under these circumstances, special accolades go to Napa, Calif.-based Ben Franklin Press & Label which took top honors with its Coppola Rosso & Bianco Chardonnay offset-printed label. Congratulations also go out to Collotype Labels of South Australia and McDowell Label and Screen Printing, who each garnered ten awards, including multiple first place awards.

More details on the Best of Show award-winning entry, along with a complete listing of all the winners in this year's contest begins on page 24.

Tom Polischuk, Editor-in-Chief

We welcome your comments regarding any part of packagePRINTING.

They can be addressed to Editor, packagePRINTING, 1500 Spring Garden St., 12th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19130, or tpolischuk@napco.com.