April 1999 Issue
1999 Excellence Awards
Spectrum Label further establishes its dominance as both a label printer and a narrow-web flexible packaging converter by winning an unprecedented third Best of Show. By David Luttenberger With its entry "Gia Vi Pho Ga," a flexo-printed flexible bag, Spectrum Label Corp., San Carlos, CA, became the first package printer to win three Best of Show titles in packagePRINTING's Excellence Awards competition. Spectrum Label previously won Best of Show honors in 1998 and 1994. Spectrum's entry, which also took First Place honors in the Flexible Packaging, Film/Foil, Flexo (process) category, was selected by judges from among more than 450 entries representing the best and
1999 Top Flexible Package Printers
New Days, New Ways Flexible packaging printers must continue to seek newer technologies and constructions, and more innovative ways to remain profitable and to lure new customers. By David Luttenberger Reflective of their industry moniker, printers in this segment must be "flexible" in the face of continued consolidation, pressing regulatory issues, and more demanding end-user interaction. These issues and others are forcing printers here to seek out new technologies, innovative manufacturing and management techniques, strategic partnerships and alliances and even new product offerings in order to maintain stability as individual companies, business units, and as a group. As reported by pP Managing Editor
Sheet Feats
Sheetfed offset press advances have reached a level where neither sheet size—nor substrate—has to matter. By Susan Friedman Sheetfed offset press technologies have reached a nearly egalitarian state in which small-, medium- and large-size jobs can be handled in similar time with similar resources. But which format are most printers trying on for size? A smaller sheet size that appears to have garnered appeal across printing markets is the 28˝ x 40˝. Achim Schmidt, manager for the packaging and label industry, Heidelberg, relates that the company's 40˝ Speedmaster CD, though introduced at DRUPA 86, took until the early '90s to really catch the sheetfed
