Label Academy launches

Historically, the printing industry was regarded as having one of the best education and training schemes of any industry in the developed world, with a good apprenticeship system, excellent printing colleges, experienced trainers, and a wide range of printing textbooks on a whole variety of printing processes, typesetting, pre-press, bookbinding and finishing operations.

Printing was regarded as a highly skilled industry with some of the highest industrial-skill wages. But what happened? Printing has moved away from a craft-based to a technology, service and communications-based industry, and the highly specialized niche sectors – such as self-adhesive labels – have evolved and grown, while pressures on costs and margins have increased. This has all been accompanied by a decline in high quality, knowledge-based education and training. Dedicated printing colleges in many parts of the world have all but disappeared, or they are not seen as relevant to the self-adhesive sector’s training needs.