GEW wins first Label Industry Green Award

GEW has been awarded the first Green Award for suppliers at the Label Industry Global Awards 2009, held on the first evening of Labelexpo Europe. The award honors companies taking collaborative action to reduce their impact on the environment before restrictive legislation is imposed.

The Green Award competition this year provided a number of different entries offering a broad range of products for label converters to reduce their impact on the environment. The challenge for the judges was to determine the best overall environmental solution from the submitted entries. All submissions were cross-evaluated using five decisive factors to determine the winner: pollution reduction/prevention, environmental leadership and economic effectiveness as well as relevance to the industry, responsible sourcing, and potential for advancement.

GEW won the Green Award for its e-System UV ink curing equipment. The e-System reduces running power by 30 percent and decreases CO2 emissions by 30 percent while extending lamp life and bringing cost savings to users. The e-System can be incorporated into any press type and has a current global breadth. The judges congratulated GEW for their efforts and commended five other entries for their hard work on the environmental front.

‘This award is the result of proactive efforts put in by the design and development team at GEW based on reducing energy costs for printers and concerns about climate change and the environment,’ said managing director Malcolm Rae. ‘Compared with conventional UV curing technologies, the e-System range of electronic power supplies and optically perfected lamp-heads has had the potential to have collectively saved customers an estimated 7 million euros and has reduced their carbon emissions by around 30,000 tonnes since its launch in 2005 to date. Using our systems and the new peripheral tools we offer to optimize energy saving will help label printers meet the environmental points criteria being set by end users. We are delighted to have received this award in the face of strong competition.’

Roger Pellow, Labelexpo managing director, commented: ‘The environment is an important issue; all printers and converters and indeed the label industry need to engage in this debate. I personally, and we as a group, believe that by adopting Green initiatives a company can gain a commercial competitive advantage while becoming more efficient and more profitable. The label industry must take collaborative action to reduce its impact on the environment before restrictive legislation is imposed.’

Pictured from left to right: Mike Fairley, Labels Group, Tarsus; Dave Lyus accepting the award on behalf of GEW; the GEW team, Franco Pagano, Chris Nuttall and Yann Stahmer; Filip Weymans, Xeikon, the Green Award sponsor; Dean Scarborough, Avery Dennison, the Awards’ sponsor; and John Davy, Labelexpo

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