A chocolate box described by judges as a beautiful piece of work carried off the Supreme Award of the 2009 New Zealand Pride In Print Awards for a South Island printer.
Before representatives of the elite of New Zealand’s printers and packaging companies at the Wellington Convention Centre, Amcor Cartons of Christchurch took the night’s major prize with its 250g Cadbury’s Old Gold Carton.
The chocolate box also won the Packaging Category of the Awards.
Nigel Harrison, manager of Amcor Cartons South Island, said that in a lifetime of working in the print industry this was the most difficult job he had encountered. He said, “It was so difficult to achieve with the colours and the embossing, but we promised to Cadbury’s we could do it. The printers who first handled it, hated it. But they were determined to make it happen and now Cadbury’s have seen the finished effect they want to replicate it in other packaging lines.” He said that he believed it was a first for this combination of print techniques in Australasia.
Laurie Lark, senior packaging judge Pride In Print, said the box deserved to win the country’s most prestigious print and packaging award. He said, “This was an outstanding example of prepress, printing and finishing. The carton used polyester silver film laminate then printed with white to allow inks to over-print the laminate, was then embossed following the shapes and contours of the chocolates.
“This made it an extremely difficult job and it is unusual to see a job embossed when it is going to be wrapped in cellophane. I would give it 10 out of 10 for difficulty but they have done very very well and I am most impressed with its quality.” He said the die makers would had to have worked from photographs of the chocolates with the contours picked out to enable them to etch the embossing die, giving a 3D effect. Then the printing and the embossing would have had to be brought together, using candesce board with a polyester silver film laminated on to it.
Lark added, “Congratulations to all those involved in the production of the Supreme Winner.”
Blue Marlin designed the Cadbury’s Old Gold Carton and Amcor Cartons Christchurch printed it. The reproduction house was Colorite, Amcor Cartons did the print finishing, Ryco Dies supplied the cutting form, Spicers Paper supplied the SBS Candesce 457 stock, and the job was printed on a Heidelberg 102CD Speedmaster using Kodak Sword Ultra T98 plates and inks supplied by Flint Ink and Ink Solutions. The blankets were Sun Graphic SF Pro Plus.
