Labelhouse has cleaned up at the Victorian Printing Industry Creativity Awards (PICAs), collecting two gold and two bronze medals at the event, which also saw Pandoras Boxes collect two golds, and CCL take one.
The 95-year-old label converter Labelhouse collected gold medals in the Packaging and Specialty Printing categories for its Jim Beam White Label 3D 700ml, and bronze in Embellishment and Labels – Roll Fed for its White Light Vodka 700ml and Jungle Gin 700ml entries respectively.
“It was a great team effort. We’re proud of everyone – there was a lot of hard work that went into those entries,” said Christina Condos, business development account manager at Labelhouse, who was also nominated as a Victorian finalist for the Media Super Young Executive of the Year Award.
Ben Testa, general manager at Labelhouse, told PKN that the Jim Beam project, which was printed flexo and digitally embellished, had been developed over three years with Labelhouse internal R&D.
“That project was taking a product we’d seen from an overseas supplier and adapting it to work in our label space, making it look effective. At the end of our run with Suntory we had some overrun, and we used that stock to run some internal trials with the material we had, to find a way to convert and enhance the label,” he said.
Pandoras Boxes was another standout, picking up two gold medals in Design categories – in Multi Piece Productions and Campaigns for QT Perth Identity, and Packaging and Labelling for QT Perth Compendium.
Other winners included CCL Label, which took gold in Labels – Roll Fed for Helen and Joey Cab Merlot; silver in that category went to United Labels and Packaging for Feel Good, while Blue Star Print won silver in Packaging for Biolage Cartons.
Walter Kuhn, president of the Printing Industries Association of Australia (PIAA), praised the Victorian packaging and printing sectors for the high quality of their entries.
“We are delighted that the event was so well received by our industry. The team worked diligently to raise the standard of the event to one that would appropriately reflect the deep respect the association has for the exemplary work produced by Victorian printing, packaging, and the visual communications sector,” he said.
The winners now progress to the National Print Awards, which will be held in conjunction with the PrintEx trade show in Sydney next month.
