Hingham, MA and Suwanee, GA – Mimaki, a leading manufacturer of wide-format inkjet printers, with the help of color management solutions from GMG, a leading developer and supplier of high-end color management software solutions, announces that it won a number of 2010 SGIA Product of the Year awards.  

Companies from around the world entered the competition, submitting more than 100 entries in 21 categories. This year's entries, which were evaluated during the 2010 SGIA Expo (Las Vegas, October 13–15), represented some of the industry's most innovative digital products.

"The Product of the Year award winners highlight the best technologies and consumables from the specialty imaging community," says Jeff Burton, SGIA's Digital Printing Analyst. "Entries were so good that judging category winners was a real challenge."

Winners of the Product of the Year competition have benefited from worldwide recognition and the ability to market their product as a winner of this prestigious competition.  

Manufacturers submit entries to gain exclusive industry recognition. Output Device Competition entries submitted prints generated from an Association test file that offered various challenges. Non-output competition entries were judged based on their perceived value to the digital imaging community by industry leaders and showcased in the Golden Image Gallery during the 2010 SGIA Expo. Awards were honored within five major categories:?Media for digital inkjet (six sub-categories); Inks; Business or other workflow software; Finishing; and?Output Devices.

Four digital printer awards for Mimaki
- Mimaki received awards for its digital printers in four categories:
- Poster Size-Solvent/Latex printers < 96: Mimaki USA Inc, JV33-160
- Rigid White Ink UV <$200K MSRP: Mimaki USA Inc, JFX-1615
- Grand Format Roll-to-Roll-Solvent & Latex inks: Mimaki USA Inc, JV33-260
- Grand Format Roll-to-Roll-UV cure ink: Mimaki USA Inc, JFX-1631R

Mimaki USA received a fifth Product of the Year award for its LF200 UV Flexible Inks for Backlit/Display.

"SGIA provides a PDF image with a number of printing challenges, such as flesh tones, gray scales, and very specific spot colors - all of which must be reproduced as accurately as possible. That is where GMG SmartProfiler and GMG ColorServer helped out," explains Francisco DeBrito, Applications Supervisor, Mimaki USA Inc and the person responsible for delivering the Mimaki entries to the SGIA. "Because it is fully wizard-driven, GMG SmartProfiler is very easy to use. We profiled our printers with GMG SmartProfiler, while GMG ColorServer created files that, in particular, helped us to create very accurate spot colors as CMYK builds."

"While our partnership with GMG helped us win the printer Product of the Year awards, we are just as pleased with other collaborative efforts," comments Steve Urmano, Markerting Director, Mimaki USA, Inc. "The technological collaboration utilizing both our companies' highly innovative solutions helps us meet the challenges specialty print providers are experiencing. The success at SGIA corroborates the color accuracy of our print engines along with the assistance of GMG color management tools."