GAA AWARDS: Gravure Is Golden for GAA Award Winners

Published: July 01, 2001, By Claudia Hine, Senior Editor

The Gravure Assn. of America (GAA) presented the 2001 Golden Cylinder Awards at its annual convention held May 22 in Milwaukee, WI. The association presents the awards each year to recognize the “best of the best” in gravure printing.

A total of 24 winners were selected from among 120 entries in 22 categories. Judges for the event were Dianna Winfrey, Sun Chemical Corp.; Chiawei Wu, Packaging Corp. of America; Tom Galt, Quebecor World; Ed Clements, Shorewood Packaging Corp.; and Jerry Cornetet, Scientific Games Intl.

Detailed below are some of the winning entries of particular interest to converters.

For more information contact Gravure Assn. of America, 1200-A Scottsville Rd., Rochester, NY 14624; ph: 716/436-2150; fax: 716/436-7689; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; www.gaa.org.

Judges' Pick

Packaging Film

Nordenia USA, Jackson, MO, earned the Judges' Pick award for Kirkland Signature 4-Cheese Ravioli. The package features a simulated china pattern that demonstrates gravure's ability to add quality to a design through a very simple graphic element. The judging panel considered print reproduction quality, prepress imaging, environmental impact, and use of technical innovation in choosing the nominations for this award, but it was this entry's overall product impact that ultimately made it the Judges' Pick.

This package also was a co-winner in the Packaging Film category, sharing the honors with Avery Dennison Decorating Technologies, Framingham, MA, and Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, MO, for a patented heat-transfer label for a Budweiser Limited Edition Magnum.

Packaging Paper

Avery Dennison was the sole winner in the Packaging Paper category for Republic Tea labels. The striking graphics on five different labels were produced using gravure-printed heat-transfer label technology creating a high-tech “invisible” label that becomes part of the bottle.

Packaging Paperboard

Westvaco Corp. and Southern Graphics Systems, both of Richmond, VA, teamed up on the Wrigley's Eclipse package, previously printed offset, to bring home a winner in the Packaging Paperboard category. Eliminating foil in favor of a recyclable board printed with metallic ink, this package mimics the visual effect of foil while cutting production costs.

Supplier Innovation — Inks and Substrates

For the Latin American market, where detergents are packaged in polyethylene bags, Kroma USA, Blue Ash, OH, was able to maintain the brand-identity colors of Ace Detergent using fluorescent inks on film. Because of a global packaging requirement, the appearance of the printing on the detergent bag must be similar to the offset printing on a North American carton. Kroma's success in this project earned it the Golden Cylinder in the Supplier Innovation — Inks and Substrates category.

Packaging Foil

Alcan/Algroup Wheaton Pharma Center, Shelbyville, KY, was given a challenge by its customer, Aygestin: Reproduce a smooth vignette without a break on a seven-color, two-sided foil package. The production run was approached using past fingerprinting and trial results as a starting point for establishing the process conditions at press. The result: high quality vignette reproduction with minimal to zero snowflaking, in addition to a good, clean, light-to-dark gradation without any harsh break lines in the vignette. The reward: a Golden Cylinder in the Packaging Foil category.