October 2000 Issue

 

2000 TLMI Awards

packagePRINTING congratulates the winners of the 2000 TLMI Awards Competition, offering a special toast to Adams Label & Tag for its Best of Show-winning wine label. By Susan Friedman, Editor The 267 North American and International entries in the 2000 TLMI Awards Competition bested last year's entry draw by 33 percent—making victory even sweeter for this year's honorees. "We were glad to see the increased amount of entries," says RotoMetrics' Steve Lee, chair of the Awards Competition Committee. Quantity was up, but so was overall quality, illustrated in part by the definitive rise in multi-process label entries. "There was lots of good competition," states

Big Business Blast-Off

Terry Fulwiler has kept WL Group grounded in family roots, while leading its trajectory into the package printing stars. By Jessica Millward ROCKET SCIENCE isn't exactly a prerequisite for most label converters, but Terry Fulwiler's aerospace engineering background has probably come in handy in his role as CEO of Wisconsin Label Group. The company, comprised of seven employees when Terry joined in 1972, has witnessed a meteoric rise in size and scope, joining tag and label luminaries in the upper brackets of packagePRINTING's annual converter ranking. Though a new alliance with Superior Label Systems will send the company even further into industry heavens, Fulwiler

Looking Class

As evidenced by these application examples, package printers have put web inspection systems to work for a broad spectrum of reasons, from meeting customer or end-use requirements, to establishing a general competitive advantage, to achieving process efficiencies. See for yourself. By Susan Friedman, Editor Fast-forward for flexpack quality A general push toward quality assurance has taken hold in the flexible packaging segment, reports Koby Shtaierman, vice president, marketing and sales for AVT. He hears more printer requests to see the web at all times, to provide process control and quality assurance for big-name brands such as Frito Lay and Coca Cola. Flexible

Movin' On In

With the Facilities Management approach to customer service, prepress providers and printers can forge mutually beneficial cohabitation arrangements. By Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor What's the best way to serve your customer? Up close and personal. That's the concept behind Facilities Management. It's a business model that extends service to the point of dedicating your own resources to meet your customer's needs—often by relocating them to your customer's site. According to Kevin Karstedt, a New York-based graphics industry workflow consultant, Facilities Management (FM) plays out in our industry in several ways. • Printers and converters provide FM services to consumer product companies (CPCs) by

Pressroom Panacea?

Despite the many benefits of UV flexo technology, industry insiders are hesitant to treat it as the package printing cure-all. by Jessica Millward, Associate Editor THE BIG BUZZ surrounding UV flexo printing has abated slightly over the last year or two. The process' benefits —improved print resolution, less makeready time and waste, better adhesion to film substrates—have been well publicized. But with developments in water-based flexo, suppliers and converters alike have begun to wonder exactly what share of the package print pie UV flexo merits. So what to make of UV flexo's mantra of rivaling offset? From its first appearance on the industry scene,