Whether in Berlin or Hong Kong, the awards season for the printing industry has reached its peak. Prizes for the best, most beautiful, and most innovative printed products and companies have been awarded throughout the world. One thing was clear: Many manroland customers stand for strong brands that have held their own in the competitive media industry – both in the webfed and sheetfed offset printing sectors.

Numerous manroland customers were nominated at the 2009 Druck&Medien Awards (Print & Media Awards), held at the end of October in Berlin, Germany. It's no wonder that manroland, the world market leader, supplied all three finalists for the category "newspaper printer of the year": The winner Bechtle Druck & Service in Esslingen, as well as Axel Springer in Ahrensburg and Presse-Druck in Augsburg.

The "catalog printer of the year" award went to Stark Druck, in Pforzheim, which uses a LITHOMAN. Rapp-Druck in Flintsbach (ROLAND 500) was crowned the "business papers printer of the year", while Evers Druck was lauded with the "environmentally-aware company of the year" award. The communication and media agency targetmedia in Rheinhausen received the "sales team of the year" award from manroland.

Outstanding printing technology enables excellent printed products and is also honored itself. The combined coating and printing unit ROLAND InlineCoater smart received the 2009 German Printing Industry Innovation Award. Japanese ROLAND 700 customer, Shinkosha, received the CIPPI Award of the CIP4 organization for most innovative process automation technology at the Print in Chicago. And manroland Australasia, started in August 2009, was pleased with the success of its customers at the PANPA Awards from the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association.

One of the winners was the Sydney Morning Herald, crowned the Best Daily Newspaper with a circulation of over 90,000. The Sunday Age was chosen as the Best Sunday Newspaper and the South China Morning Post, in Hong Kong, won the "Technical Excellence" Award for the fifth time running. Besides printing quality, direct marketing is considered an essential part of a successful business model. The Advertiser and The Sun-Herald were set apart from the rest of the competition with awards in the "Marketing and Branding" and "Display Advertising" categories respectively.

A business model with roots in Osnabrück is another reason for manroland to be proud: At this year's World Young Reader Prize awards, the publishing house Neue OZ took first place in the Editorial Strategy category for its cross-media youth magazine "blue". "With blue, we were able to turn a very strong online product into a just as successful printed product. The publication is created by the target group for the target group. This prize is hugely motivating for our young team," says Paul Wehberg, Director of Electronic Media at Neue OZ publishing house and project director for "blue".