Des Plaines, IL - Schawk, Inc., a leading provider of brand point management services enabling companies of all sizes to connect their brands with consumers to create deeper brand affinity, announced today that its U.K. division has earned an International Grand Prix Cyrel Award in the corrugated pre-print category for its premedia work on the Hussqvarna brand.

Initiated by DuPont Packaging Graphics in 1982, the Grand Prix Cyrel competition is recognized as a prestigious competition in the flexo and package printing industries that acknowledges those companies around the world that design and produce outstanding packaging.

"Schawk is thrilled to be recognized for its premedia excellence with a coveted International Grand Prix Cyrel Award," said Matt Bennett, group managing director of Schawk's European operations. "We are always seeking new and better ways of achieving ever higher levels of quality in flexo package printing to help our clients create compelling and consistent brand experiences. The Grand Prix Cyrel Award is recognition of our efforts."

Rob Moore, managing director of Schawk's U.K. office, said, "Winning the Grand Prix Cyrel Award in this category is especially gratifying as this particular project was made more complex by the need for a fifth special color in the product illustration and by the size of the artwork. It required trapping and retouching massive five-color images as well as color profiling and proofs that were 2.6 meters."

According to the award's sponsors, this year's recipients were drawn from more than 750 submissions coming from the flexographic printed packaging industry in Africa, France, Greece, Italy, Middle East, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Outstanding register accuracy, highlights holding and excellent smoothness on vignettes have contributed to the exceptional quality of this year's submissions.

In line with the Grand Prix Cyrel goal of sharing the most inspiring printed packages obtained by using state-of-the-art DuPont Cyrel technologies and science, the entries submitted are evaluated by an independent jury with the objective to identify future-oriented solutions developed in proactive, innovative and entrepreneurial ways. The flexo printing packages submitted were evaluated on criteria such as design, substrate selection, quality and difficulty of reproduction and printing, and final printed package appearance and functionality.

SCA Packaging, a leading European company of customer-specific packaging solutions printed the award-winning Hussqvarna packaging.