SWUG celebrates two decades of news
After two decades of presenting the latest in technical information for industry users, the conference continues to be one of the most popular and well-attended gatherings of the year. About 50 per cent of this year’s attendees were first timers with delegates coming from all around Australia as well as New Zealand.
Delegates heard presentations on a wide range of topics including the latest in CTP screening, new industry colour specifications, OH&S, disaster recovery and roller maintenance. As usual, the engineers sessions, when the conference is given over to open discussion of current problems and issues facing printers today, proved to be very popular.
This year’s annual site visit was to the new Rural Press Printing Centre at Ballarat featuring the nine tower MAN Roland UNISET 75 in action.
In the annual SWUG awards for newspaper printing, the big winners were again Rural Press North Richmond which took out the Coates Australia Shield for Best Four-Colour Newspaper and the Flint Ink Shield for Best Coldset Commercial Publication. Fairfax Regional Printers at Newcastle won the Art Roller Shield for Best Overall Print Quality. (Phto caption: The winning team from Fairfax Regional Printers with the Art Roller Shield for Best Overall Print Quality (left to right): Michael Mueller, Dave Davies, Michael Aubrey, and David Hedges.)
Judges Wayne Johnstone and Phil Lawrence commented that the competition this year was extremely tight with only a few percentage points separating the top entries.
The SWUG Apprentice of the Year award went to Warren Schmidt, a third year apprentice from Rural Press Printing Ormiston in Queensland. As part of his major prize, Warren will undertake a nationwide fact-finding tour of print sites sponsored by SWUG.
Full coverage of the conference proceedings will be available in the latest issue of the SWUG newspaper, which will be out in due course.
In the annual SWUG awards for newspaper printing, the big winners were again Rural Press North Richmond which took out the Coates Australia Shield for Best Four-Colour Newspaper and the Flint Ink Shield for Best Coldset Commercial Publication. Fairfax Regional Printers at Newcastle won the Art Roller Shield for Best Overall Print Quality. (Phto caption: The winning team from Fairfax Regional Printers with the Art Roller Shield for Best Overall Print Quality (left to right): Michael Mueller, Dave Davies, Michael Aubrey, and David Hedges.)