Parkside Flexibles’ Nick Smith (L) and Phil O’Driscoll (R) receive the award from Stationers’ Master Nick Steidl
The Innovation Excellence Awards 2018 held on 26 June at Stationers’ Hall in London saw flexo printer Parkside Flexibles take the Innovator of the Year and packaging specialist Ultimate Digital secure a Highly Commended.
Parkside’s win was for Park 2 Nature, a range of compostable laminate and ink combinations that can be used in food packaging applications as a ‘viable alternative to traditional plastic packaging’. Although when challenged by co-presenter Peter Day of BBC Radio on the cost of these alternatives, Parkside’s innovation director Phil O’Driscoll had to admit that it was challenging an established market and yet to achieve economies of scale, the work was deemed worthy of the Novel Manufacturing Technology award as well as the overall prize.
Chairman of the awards Jonathan Drori commented, ‘the judges were particularly impressed by both the eye-catching attractiveness of the product and the tenacity of the team, noting the long period of research culminating in Park 2 Nature’.
Ultimate Digital was Highly Commended for Kids’ Ink, a web-to-print service that allows schoolchildren to create artwork on a tablet and have it uploaded and printed onto a personalised lunch bag. Printed on an HP Indigo 20000 roll-fed digital press, linked to the portal via Ultimate’s home-brewed Smartflow software, the lunch bags are made of anti-bacterial plastic making them suitable for repeated use with food. Ultimate’s business development executive Emma Winton reported that a number of schools were funding the production themselves, while others were sharing the costs with parents.
Sun Chemical won the Novel Product Design category for SunMotion, a signage and display system that simulates motion by sequentially illuminating a series of fluorescent inkjet-printed layers that are otherwise invisible. The system is considerably cheaper than LED display panels, albeit less flexible. Sun Chemical was also highly commended for a range of compostable flexo inks for food packaging, as was Esko for its XPS Crystal flexo platesetter technology.
Hobs Group was highly commended for its work with its VRCUB3D cardboard pop-up cube which provides a lightweight and portable VR environment. Mixed reality (VR images superimposed on real world views) was a winner for LoopSapce, an app for a mixed reality headset developed by DoubleMe, that allows people to meet and collaborate in a virtual space.
