With just under 300 people in attendance the Australian Packaging and Processing Machinery Association (APPMA) announced the winners of 2011 Awards of Excellence on Wednesday the 23rd of March during AUSPACK PLUS in Melbourne.
Proudly supported by DB Schenker, Midway Metals, PKN, SEW Eurodrive and SMC, the biennial Awards of Excellence are conducted by the Australian Packaging and Processing Machinery Association to recognise the efforts of the successful companies, their employees and the skills required for their outstanding contribution to meet the needs of the packaging industry.
According to Mr Rob Lawrence, Chairman, APPMA, the focus of the Awards is to be directed towards the business improvements, for example increase in sales or profit for the machinery supplier, or an efficiency increase, or cost reduction to the customer by using the packaging machinery.
Awards categories include Export Achievement Award, Design Award, and the Imported Equipment Award, the Customer Partnership Award and the APPMA Scholarship.
2011 Export Achievement Award
The Export Achievement Award recipient has made a worthwhile contribution to an existing or new export market. Contributions can include establishing a new market, achieving a significant increase in sales by both the supplier and the customer, identifiable by monetary gain from an export activity.
The 2011 Export Achievement Award was presented to Accuweigh/BudPak for the PLA-G series of net weighers.
Mr Jason Ferguson, General Manager Accuweigh/BudPak said that the PLA-G series of net weighers, are designed for high speed, high accuracy weighing of free-flowing products (such as refined sugar) in capacities from 500g up to 3000g.
“The PLA-G series of weighers are well-proven and used extensively in the sugar industry throughout South East Asia (plus Australia and other parts of the world), and are virtually considered ‘industry standard’ for weighing retail packs of refined sugar. Overseas countries include Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, New Zealand, and Vietnam. Almost 100 weighers have now been manufactured, and the PLA-G Series are a leading contributor to the sales and profitability of our company.
“Receiving the 2011 Export Achievement Award is a significant benefit to the marketing of Accuweigh/Budpak products to both the local and export markets and will allows us to enhance our international opportunities.” Mr Ferguson said.
2011 Design Achievement Award
The Design Achievement Award recognises the development of a packaging or processing line, or module that results in the significant advancement of packaging and processing machinery technology by either introducing a new idea or modifying an existing principle. The design concept and implementation are weighted highly in the award decision, where better business performance must be achieved.
The 2011 Design Achievement Award was presented to Matthews Australasia for iDSnet.
iDSnet goes well beyond the compliance requirements of print and application of labels and date coding, and provides a solution to a growing problem for manufactures for Package Code Management.
Traceability and quality assurance has become an increasingly important over the past decade, and Matthews has identified the need, taken ownership of it and provided a solution.
iDSnet stood out as it is a solution to a problem for a huge component of the manufacturing sector – certainly all food and packaging companies with coding and packaging errors. Matthews Australasia has continued to refine and improve iDSnet over the past few years and have made significant headway in development and functionality of the software to suit Australian manufacturers’ requirements.
Mr Lester Nichol, Managing Director of Matthews Australasia said that ‘they were thrilled to win the 2011 Design Achievement Award for our Australian developed iDSnet at AUSPACK PLUS 2011.’
“Our team have been steadily refining this solution since winning the ‘Best New Product’ Award for it at AUSPACK 2009. It is now installed in over 100 Australian manufacturing plants and we have just begun exporting it to the US and Europe,”
“We would like to thank the APPMA for running these great awards to recognise the hard work put in by Australian packaging and processing machinery organisations. iDSnet is a Packaging Code Management solution that ensures FMCG manufacturers always place the correct traceability codes on packaged goods.” Mr Nichol said.
2011 Imported Equipment Award
The Imported Equipment Award is designed to recognise the efforts of a company who promotes their overseas principal’s equipment in the Australian market, where the equipment in itself represents a high standard of excellence in every respect relevant to the industry consistent with the standard applied.
The 2011 Imported Equipment Award was presented to insignia for the Domino M-Series label applicator.
The insignia entry stood out for its ability, using the Domino M-series label applicator, to print and apply labels to cartons at high speed. This ability allows the technology to be used by the high-volume, high-speed manufacturers where potential cost savings are high. The ability of the high-speed system to print and apply on-line creates the opportunity to reduce packaging inventory, provide more real time information, reduce carton loss and line change over times. The insignia system also stood out for a high level of guarding, to protect the operators and prevent injury, while still providing a clean design and good assess for cleaning.
According to Mr Brad Jeavons, National Sales Manager – Labelling, insignia, ‘The Domino products, with their proven performance and high reliability, along with the on-going research and development into improved and new technologies, has resulted in the new M-Series label applicators.
“The Domino M-Series label applicators facilitate print and apply on lines up to 100 cartons per minute. OEE, user friendliness through common user interfaces and simple loading, and most of all limited service requirements coupled with commonality of parts are major considerations leading to market leading up-time performance for all Domino products.
“The recognition that insignia and Domino have received through the 2011 APPMA Awards of Excellence is fantastic. Receiving the 2011 Imported Equipment Award recognises the quality of Domino equipment and also acknowledges our skilled and hard-working people dedicated to making projects work and keep them running.” Mr Jeavons said.
2011 Customer Partnership Award
The Customer Partnership Award has a major emphasis on the customisation of packaging and processing machinery which is required to suit a customer’s individual needs. The winner, individual or team, must be able to demonstrate that the end user has experienced increased sales, increased plant efficiency and profitability.
The 2011 Customer Partnership Award was presented to Fibre King for the development of the Laminator/Tray Erector in partnership with Amcor.
Mr Earle Roberts, Chief Executive Officer, Fibre King, said that “Their partnership with Amcor in the development of the Laminator/Tray Erector has been one of the most pivotal projects that Fibre King has undertaken in its 85 year history. The Laminator delivered a significant step change in the Meat Industry,”
Mr Roberts highlighted the increase in productivity, “We have reduced the number of operations Amcor require to construct a tray, which speeds up the production line, reduces cost, and increases transport and storage efficiencies of the product. Collaboration changed the way Amcor approached chilled cartons, to the end customer’s benefit.”
“Fibre King has been a long term supporter of the APPMA and winner of many APPMA awards. We take the most pride in winning the Customer Partnership Award category as we believe this award reflects the future for the Australian Packaging and Processing Machinery industry: innovation through close co-operation with customer delivering long term benefits to both parties. In particular this Fibre King/Amcor award highlights the focus materials experts working with machinery experts can bring to deliver world’s best practice for the end user.” Mr Roberts said.
2011 APPMA Scholarship
The 2011 APPMA Scholarship winner is Mr Jude Van Der Zalm, Product and Packaging
Commercialisation Manager, National Foods Morwell. The APPMA Scholarship enables one person each year to study an Australian Institute of Packaging (AIP) internationally accredited packaging course.
According to Rob Lawrence, Jude has been awarded a scholarship to undertake a Certificate in Packaging.
“Jude has worked in both the manufacture of food packaging and food products using packaging materials.
He has always had an interest in packaging due to starting their working career in the plastics manufacturing industry working with thermoformed and injection moulded products,” Mr Lawrence said.
“Jude is a qualified fitter and he uses his mechanical aptitude to good effect as he focuses not just on the packaging materials, not just on the packaging equipment, but on the equipment/material interface. In his current role he is key to the introduction of new products and materials, and also is the site’s champion of packaging material quality, and he works closely with suppliers of packaging,” he said.