PrintWeek unveils special Covid Awards
The pandemic fallout continues to impact the industry as print businesses hit the buffers and try to survive. There have been innumerable instances of debts and turnover plummeting. In all this there is a ray of hope. This is what PrintWeek is celebrating during the 12th edition of its Annual Awards.
22 Jun 2022 | By Charmiane Alexander
Special Covid-19 Awards: A total of five awards will be presented to recognise factories and teams in the Indian print industry
Kalpak Shah, the senior executive - Awards and Events at PrintWeek and WhatPackaging? magazines said "We have 30 Award categories in total. Of this, the Awards are categorised as the Quality Awards, the Performance Awards and the Special Covid-19 Awards. Shah said, "The Performance Awards has 11 categories; Quality Awards has 14 categories and the Special Covid-19 Awards has five categories."
Shah said there are stirring, very inspiring stories we heard of companies that completely restructured and re-imagined their ops, as a result they have developed a new vision for print in India". Shah felt there are important lessons to learn from these businesses because they have created a more thoughtful and more relevant approach to product development and a more empowering and agile industry culture.
Kalpak Shah is right.
Shah: The Covid Awards is our way to celebrate how firms rose to the occasion despite the ongoing uncertainty
Only recently, the Indian Industry Excellence Award was conferred to the Offset Printers Association (OPA) for "the invaluable contribution made during Covid-times and provided opportunities available during the difficult times of lockdown." Team PrintWeek has been tracking OPA's webinars during the pandemic where 106 industry experts were invited to present their views. OPA webinars have been attended by 6,000 delegates. In addition, OPA created 50 hours of video recording on their YouTube Channel OPA Ludhiana.
Also, there is the case study of a book print firm in Gujarat, who were "tasked to conduct a contactless exam". This was during the peak of the Covid wave. And so, due to the conditions that prevailed, the authorities could not conduct a paper and pencil exams with students sitting in their respective home countries. The head of the education book print firm shared with PrintWeek that "This posed a major challenge to conventional paper and pencil printing assignments. We executed the online exam with students appearing from India plus 45 countries with a novel concept of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) with real time monitoring i.e., proctoring. This was accomplished as a one time scenario. The best thing was: the results were declared and published instantly."
Likewise there have been innumerable instances of companies that served their customers with a very tight time window of 48-hours operation. And so, 50 to 100 tonnes of material to pack essential commodities was delivered on time via chartered flights or special trains to the customer's destination.
Kalpak Shah concluded, "The PrintWeek Special Awards for Covid is our way to celebrate how certain firms and their employees rose to the occasion despite the ongoing uncertainty which were prevalent due to the pandemic. These firms and their teams were confident about a bigger and better future for the business. And that's most impressive."
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