The yearly round of Printing Industries sponsored awards comes to an end this month with the Queensland PICAs on November 28. Under new arrangements, gold winners are automatically entered for the National Print Awards, announced next May. Heatset printers around the country have largely shared honours at state events, with IPMG’s Offset Alpine scoring highly at the NSW Print Excellence awards and was named ‘printer of the year’. In Victoria’s new gala event – where the top ranking is a diamond award – PMP Print (coated stock off-line finished, and publications with a cover price), and Hannanprint Victoria (coated stock press finished, and uncoated stock) shared the top web-offset honours evenly. Among runners-up, Hannanprint had a narrow edge with three emerald (second) places and three ruby, against PMP’s two emerald and three ruby! NSW Print Excellence awards NSW Print Excellence awards presented in mid-October saw the top prize for NSW Printer of the Year go to Offset Alpine Printing. Gold awards in the web-offset categories went to: publications with a cover price – Hannanprint NSW; uncoated stock – Offset Alpine Printing; coated stock, finished offline – Webstar; coated stock, press finished – Hannanprint NSW. Other awards went to Offset Alpine (three silver, two bronze), Hannanprint (two silver), Webstar (one silver, one bronze) and MPD (bronze). Offset Alpine also won a gold awards for its education and training initiatives and silver for occupational health and safety initiatives in the business awards. South Australia PICAs Adelaide web-offset printer Cadillac Printing bathed in gold, silver and bronze at the South Australia and NT Printing Industry Craftsmanship Awards in September. Gold awards in the SA web-offset categories were: Coated stock – Cadillac Printing; publications with a cover price – Cadillac Printing; uncoated stock – Cadillac Printing. Silver: coated stock – Cadillac Printing; publications with a cover price – Griffin Press. Bronze: coated stock – Cadillac Printing. Western Australia PICAs In the WA awards, PMP Print and West Australian Newspapers shared three gold awards while PMP also scored in silver and bronze. Gold awards: direct mail and promotional – PMP Print; newspapers/newspaper inserts – PMP Print, and West Australian Newspapers. Silver: direct mail and promotional – PMP Print; newspapers/newspaper inserts -Rural Press Printing, and Scott Print. Bronze: direct mail and promotional – PMP Print; newspapers/newspaper inserts – PMP Print. Tasmania PICAs In Tasmania, the sheetfed newspapers category was won by Printit, with the ‘Circular Head Chronicle’ taking silver. Harris Print’s swansong was a gold in the web newspapers category for the ‘Glenorchy Gazette’, and no gold was awarded in the web newspaper supplements/inserts category. In the ACT Page awards, a job printed by BlueStar Print won gold for innovation excellence (client satisfaction) for Lovedesign Group. The client was Canberra Cancerian Committee.