Stuff’s Wellington daily, The Post was among the winners when PrintNZ took its Pride in Print celebrations to the city on Friday night.

The paper – the Dominion Post until a rebranding in April last year – won the publications category for The Post Weekend Te Upoko O Te Ika of December 9 last year.

The awards night at Wellington’s TĀKINA Events also saw Otago Daily Times publisher Allied Press win the process award for coldset web-offset for Essence (October 2023).

Allied Press printer George Cunningham had been a runner-up in the PrintNZ Apprentice of the Year competition, finally taken out by flexo printer Levi Lindsey from label printer MCC Auckland. Finalists including Anna Hodge (Be My Guest Design), Amit Shankar (Labelmakers) and Kathryn Wheeler (Freedom Plus) were interviewed earlier on the day of the awards evening.

The event had turned out to be a big night for MCC, with its MCC Albany operation winning the Pride in Print ‘supreme’ award for a Red Mill Rum label. The company rebranded as Multi-Color Corporation from Hally Labels last year.

Blue Star units also took two category places, for business print (Wellington) and paper and board packaging (Blue Star Constellation).

Hosted by TV presenter Hilary Barry (pictured) – a born-and-bred Wellingtonian” who nonetheless said she had been “blown horizontal at the airport” – the gala event was attended by an audience of about 400.