Coinciding with the start of spring, the winners of the Heidelberg Eco Printing Award were honored at a small ceremony at the Print Media Academy in Heidelberg. Dick Kouwenhoven, owner of Hemlock Printers, Canada, was presented with the environmental award for the most sustainable print shop, which comes with a prize fund of 30,000 Euro. Kazuhisa Yoshida, owner of Yoshida Printing in Japan, accepted the award for most innovative stand-alone solution and a check for 20,000 Euro. A five-member panel of international judges selected the two winners from 52 applicants. Together with judge Dr. Achim Schorb from the Heidelberg Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU), Heidelberg board members Dr. Jürgen Rautert and Stephan Plenz handed over the two HEI Eco Printing Award sculptures along with the certificates and prize checks.

Most sustainable print shop - Hemlock Printers, Canada

As spokesperson for the panel, Dr. Achim Schorb explained in his award speech why they chose Hemlock Printers as the winner of the HEI Eco Printing Award. Hemlock Printers Ltd. in Burnarby BC, Canada, was chosen as a sustainable company in the area of sheetfed printing. It was back in the 1970s that the company formulated its first environmental policy, adopted environmental guidelines and set ambitious environmental targets, and it continues to monitor and expand these guiding principles today. The company fosters a comprehensive social commitment and endeavors to get all its 240 employees involved. It has also set up a working group that is dedicated to sustainability issues. This integral approach incorporates the entire printing process, administration, building management, transport logistics for goods and employees, paper and material selection, ongoing training and education, and disposal. The company also supports social commitment, environmental groups and ecological initiatives. One such group has been established, for example, with the aim of verifying that sustainability criteria are met when sourcing pulp. Hemlock has developed its own paper policy, which encourages customers to opt for recycled paper or paper with the FSC seal. The company passes on its expertise in environmental protection and sustainability by holding lectures and seminars across America.

For more information, please vistit: www.hemlock.com

Most innovative stand-alone solution - Yoshida Printing, Japan

The panel unanimously voted Yoshida Printing from Nigata, Japan, as the winner of the most innovative stand-alone solution. The company’s "fresh print" concept, which facilitates production in smaller batches and speeds up print processing, has a positive impact on the environment and is seen as an impressive solution that can be applied to the entire print industry. This solution harmonizes the demands of industrial production with the increasing requirements for environmental protection, energy efficiency and waste avoidance. "Fresh print" generates added value for customers through demand-based printing. For example, annual framework agreements are drawn up for company catalogs detailing the number of copies and overall price. The catalogs are only printed when the customer orders the requisite number of copies. This enables changes to products and prices to be updated at short notice and included in the next print batch with, at most, a minimum additional workload. This minimizes the paper waste caused by obsolete catalogs or copies that have become soiled through storage. The print shop benefits from satisfied and, therefore, loyal customers, while the environment profits from the reduction in paper consumption and waste paper.

In addition to its "fresh print" concept, Yoshida Printing has also been able to switch from three to two-shift operation without reducing the product output thanks to its rationalization strategies, changes to the way the work is organized, and technical innovations. These developments eliminate the need for employees to work nightshifts and are proven to cut energy consumption by 16 percent, thus making an important contribution to environmental protection. Yoshida has a workforce of 67. In cooperation with an ink manufacturer, Yoshida has also optimized ink drying speeds, thus cutting down on waste and shortening makeready times.
For more information, please visit: www.ddc.co.jp

HEI Eco Printing Award honors solutions focused on environmental protection, economic benefits and social responsibility

To encourage printing companies to make their solutions for environmental protection available to a wider audience, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) used drupa 2008 to invite them to submit entries for the first international HEI Eco Printing Award for sustainable sheetfed offset printing. In total, 52 companies from Africa, Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Singapore, and New Caledonia applied. An independent panel of judges selected the two winners from these entries. The judges were Anne-Marie De Noose from the European printing association INTERGRAF in Brussels, Rainer Litty from the Panda Fördergesellschaft für Umwelt mbH as the marketing company of Umweltstiftung WWF Deutschland, Dr. Achim Schorb from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU) in Heidelberg, William D’Alessandro, Editor-in-Chief of the Crosslands Bulletin on Business, Law, and the Environment in the U.S., and Philip Lawrence, Managing Director of  Eco Logical Strategies in Australia.  "I am impressed with the number of participants and, above all, the high quality of the entries to the HEI Eco Printing Award," said Dr. Jürgen Rautert, Management Board Member for Markets at Heidelberg. "This goes to show that innovative print shops have developed from their ecological niche market and are using their creative solutions to achieve sustainable and economic success. We launched this award in order to identify innovative solutions via our worldwide sales and service network and to pass on this know-how to the market," continues Rautert. Stephan Plenz, Management Board Member for Technology and responsible for environmental protection at Heidelberg, is certain that, "Only a holistic approach can help improve a company's environmental performance. That’s why we at Heidelberg don't just focus our environmental protection concepts on the printing process, but also factor them into the development and production of our machines." The company plans to run the HEI Eco Printing Award every two years.

New Heidelberg website dedicated to ecological issues

Ecological issues are playing an ever greater role in the print industry. For a number of years, Heidelberg has been working on solutions for the development, production and utilization of presses that will limit the consumption of resources, reduce emissions and cut wastage. The ambitious end-to-end concept that Heidelberg has developed has been proven in practice. Since the company made environmental protection a key business aim in 1992, this issue has continued to gain in significance, proving time and again that sustainability and economic success are not mutually exclusive. It is for this reason that Heidelberg has set up a dedicated area on its website, which provides a whole range of information on the subject of ecology.
HEI Eco website: www.heidelberg.com/eco

Shortlist for the HEI Eco Printing Award

There was a shortlist of ten companies from where the judges’ selected the two winners. The following eight companies were also on the shortlist:

Sustainable printing companies:

    •    Stark Druck GmbH  & CoKG, Pforzheim, Deutschland, www.stark-druck.de
    •    Druckerei Lokay, Reinheim, Deutschland, www.lokay.de
    •    Gugler GmbH, Melk, Österreich, www.gugler.at
    •    SandyAlexander Inc., Clifton NJ, USA, www.sandyinc.com
    •    Shanghai Tobacco Package Printing Co., Ltd., China, www.sh-tobacco.com.cn
Innovative stand-alone solution:
    •    Vögeli AG, Langnau, Schweiz, www.voegeli.ch
    •    Black Rainbow, Wtree, Vic., Australien, www.blackrainbow.com.au
    •    Red I, Auckland, Neuseeland, www.red-i.co.nz