David Savastano, Editor04.14.22
Having cancelled the 2020 and 2021 National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers’ (NAPIM) Conventions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NAPIM’s members enjoyed a return to an in-person event from April 8-11, 2022 at The Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club in St. Petersburg, FL.
With talks centering on a wide range of topics, from the state of the US economy to internships and solving packaging challenges, NAPIM put together a slate of speakers who gave attendees a lot to consider.
There was also change in how NAPIM works. NAPIM has chosen to go with SEVEN12 Management, a full-service association management company. Molly Alton Mullins, CEO of SEVEN12 Management, serves as NAPIM executive director, and she said she was happy with how the convention went.
“This was my first NAPIM Convention, as SEVEN12 Management just came on board to manage the association in January 2022,”Mullins said. “It was a wonderful opportunity to meet everyone face to face and learn more about NAPIM and how the association, and the convention, brings value to their business. I look forward to building on the success of this year’s show and making it even better next year.”
“NAPIM’s Convention this past week was the first time the NAPIM community has gotten together in more than two years,” Mullins added. “The energy, the excitement, and the engagement were felt by all during the course of the show that included four days of education, networking, and opportunities to explore St. Petersburg.”
George R. Fuchs, NAPIM’s director – regulatory affairs and technology, said that it was great that the 2022 Annual Convention brought NAPIM back to the live event format.
“Everyone attending seemed particularly happy to renew acquaintances and friendships and build new ones,” Fuchs said. “Once again, this year’s program was wide ranging addressing multiple topics of interest to our attendees. This event is specifically designed to provide maximum networking value and the attendees all took advantage. The Vinoy hotel in St. Petersburg, FL proved to be another excellent venue for our event. The hotel’s location in the downtown allowed for attendees to walk to many local attractions and restaurants located within minutes of the hotel.”
“Offsite events, receptions and the Awards Dinner were welcome, in-person events after two years of absence,” added Fuchs. “The Awards Dinner was a personal highlight for me. I was extremely gratified with those selected for the Printing Ink Pioneer award as well as being able to congratulate two Ault Award winners. Both Jim Leitch of Wikoff Color and Vivy DaCosta of hubergroup are personal friends, industry stalwarts and incredibly deserving of these awards. I commend and congratulate both of them.”
Keynote Talk and State of the Industry
The NAPIM Convention opened with a keynote talk by Billy Riggs, who focused on “Magic of Change & Sustainability.” Combining magic tricks with motiviational thoughts, Riggs talked about the importance of maintaining integrity.
“Your life is moved by a host of invisible forces, starting with your character,” Riggs noted. “You have to ruthlessly protect your integrity. You can’t allow yourself to be a victim of change. You have to maintain your integrity, improve your attitude, abandon self-doubt and never give up.”
Next up was the State of the Industry Report, delivered by NAIM Management Information Committee members Bryce Kristo, EVP, CFO and general affairs for INX International Ink Co., and John Jilek Jr., president and COO of Inksolutions.
Kristo noted that inflation and supply chain concerns are adding to the list of issues for ink companies and their suppliers.
“Supply chain issues remain prevalent and continued volatility is being driven by unforeseen events. We have to balance pricing costs and selling price,” added Kristo.
Kristo noted that 60% of respondents plan on adding equipment, 70% replacing equipment and 70% adding employees, while 80% of respondents expect sales increases of 5% or more, most likely driven by price increases and COVID recovery
Jilek noted that 95% of the survey’s respondents saw growth in 2022, while 71.4% of respondents said COVID affected their travel budgets for their company and 90% say they will use remote and virtual communication as an option to face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, 62.5% see flexo moving to water-based due to raw material volatility as well as sustainability.
Fuchs said that feedback on the opening day talks were excellent.
“Our keynote, Billy Riggs, started the event with an amazing demonstration of magical skills while delivering an important message regarding the need for self-confidence, drive and perseverance – a truly inspiring and entertaining presentation,” said Fuchs.
“John Jilek Jr. of Inksolutions and Bryce Kristo of INX delivered an insightful and interesting State of the Industry report. The SOTI is one of the highlights of the Annual Meeting because it focuses solely on the printing ink manufacturing space,” he added.
Fuchs noted that the business sessions on Sunday and Monday morning focused on understanding and attracting younger people to the industry.
“Both George Gilsan of Appalachian State and Tim Heath of University of South Florida imparted key insights that will be extremely beneficial in helping ink and supplier companies understand what the newest generation of college graduates value and look for in a potential employer,” he said.
“On Monday I presented an overview of current market data, printing ink-related technical and regulatory issues. I was followed by Rue Patel and Mike Murdoch, both supply chain experts in the food packaging space. Rue and Mike shared key supply chain management information gained from their years of experience in area of critical importance to the ink industry.”
Business Sessions
The next two days featured business sessions moderated by Ralph Nappi that covered a wide range of topics, beginning with an insightful talk by Dr. Michael Youngblood, professor of economics from Rock Valley College, who discussed "The U.S. Economic Challenge, Looking Back and Forward."
Dr. Youngblood noted that the big three economic statistics are production of goods and services, unemployment and inflation, which is at 8%. He pointed out that during the pandemic, lockdowns created mass unemployment and lower incomes on the demand side, while on the supply side, some businesses closed due to COVID outbreaks.
“The recession of 2020 was the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, with $2 trillion in lost output,’ said Dr. Youngblood. “Restaurant reservations had already fallen 73% before the government mandated that restaurants closed. It was also the shortest recession. Over 95% of the $2 trillion gap in output has been closed.”
Between February and April 2020, 25.3 million jobs were lost, and the unemployment rate was 14.8% in April 2020. Dr, Youngblood observed that the pandemic led to a higher unemployment rate for women, who are more represented in the leisure and hospitality industries.
“There were four main reasons people left the labor force during the pandemic,” he added. “Fear of COVID, child care due to school closures, enhanced unemployment benefits and early retirements. Employment is still 2.8% below where it would be.”
As a result of the Great Resignation, there are currently 11 million job openings, leading to increased costs of employing workers. In addition, workers are spending 17.1% less time at the work place as they had previously.
Dr. Youngblood closed his talk by noting that some changes created by the pandemic will likely continue going forward.
“There are behaviors that are likely to persist,” he said. “We expect working from home to continue as workers like it. As a result, employers expect to reduce work space. More online shopping will continue, especially groceries, as they have continued to be popular. Consumer like curbside delivery. Telemedicine increased and 20% of adults have had a telemedicine appointment in last month. Online learning is also growing, and home food preparation is also continuing to grow.”
Dr. George Gilsan of Appalachian State University followed with an excellent talk on "How to Strengthen Your Company’s Internship Program."
“An internship program can develop a pipeline of employees. The first challenge is knowing what an internship is – it’s a contract between your company, the university and the student,” said Dr. Gilsan. “The student must have an on-site supervisor, with defined duties, expectations and hours. There must be an evaluation of the student’s performance and the company must provide a safe, secure non-discriminatory workplace.”
“The second challenge is that students don’t know the ink industry,” he added. “That’s a problem because ink is critical to the printing industry. You need to put your brand in front of them – supply ink for the school’s labs, participate in school career fairs, provide job postings. The third challenge is the gender imbalance. Two-thirds of graphic enrollments are women. Ink manufacturing is not. Women are coming into our industry and we need to adapt to it.”
“The fourth challenge is that universities are experiencing a dramatic increase in ethnic diversity,” Dr. Gilsan added. “Large numbers of Hispanics. If students don’t feel empowered, they will be timid. They have to know that mistakes do happen. Let them know you want them to take initiative.”
Dr. Gilsan said that students know what they want from an employer.
“Money still matters, as student debt is a huge burden,” he concluded. “They want to know if your company is profitable. They want an opportunity for growth and want to like the people they work with. That has become very important.”
Timothy Heath of the University of South Florida closed the first Business Session with his talk, “The Promise and Perils of Accelerating Rates of Change.”
“The world is changing. Beware – anti-change biases breed not just stagnation, but regression to worse times,” Heath said.
The Monday Business Session began with the Technical Associate Member (TAM)
Breakfast, which featured an ink industry CEO Panel with Sun Chemical’s Chris Parrilli, INX International Ink’s John Hrdlick and Wikoff Color’s Geoff Peters. The CEOs faced a wide range of topics, including the idea of vertical integration, which could be costly.
“Vertical integration is part of our philosophy,” said Parrilli. “Building a greenfield site is expensive. When this all balances out, will customers want to pay for it.
“The cost of producing our own raw materials would be a significant cost,” said Hrdlick. “It would take a lot of time for us.”
“If we have capital to invest, we’ll invest it in equipment, new facilities and acquisitions that will help us grow,” Peters said.
How the pandemic changed the way people work has been significant.
“The pandemic allowed for a change of thinking,” Parrilli observed. “I understand why people want flexibility. We understand people’s wants have changed. We are trying to find the middle ground. Our people are our most important resource. It’s amazing what a team can do when under stress.”
“People want flexible hours and time off, and we are adjusting our shift schedules,” Hrd-lick said. “I can’t say enough for our employees who came to work every day. We have fur-ther developed our internship program on the management side. There are certain parts of our team we are strengthening.”
Internships also came up in the discussion.
We believe heavily in internships, and have our Wikoff management training,” Peters said. “We are employee owned and we believe it makes a difference.”
“When you bring people in it’s how you treat them, what their aspirations are using in-ternships,” Parrilli noted.
“We use radio and geofencing for recruiting people for manufacturing,” Hrdlick said.
Ultimately, companies are rethinking how they do business.
“Transparency and communication is what helps us get through this,” Parrilli said. “I think that transparency in our business is so much greater than it used to be.
“We expect our customers will rethink giving 100% to one company,” Hrdlick noted. “There are certain promises we can’t do anymore in our contracts with our customers.
“We have always tried to have more than one source for our raw materials, and we need more than one country,” said Peters. “We put out more product than we did before, and we couldn’t have done what we did without the support of everyone here. I want to thank all the suppliers for the excellent job they did on the supply chain during the pandemic.”
Fuchs was up next with his discussion on regulations, including state laws and food pack-aging.
“Washington State wants 0.000064 ug/l parts per quadrillion for PCBs. I don’t think they can do that,” said Fuchs. “I explained that you can’t use offset inks on a flexo process, and I told them you will drive every printer from the state of Washington out of business.”
“The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has long realized they don’t have printing inks covered,” Fuchs noted. “We have submitted guidance. I will say that the FDA is the best of the federal regulatory agencies. They recognize the value of print on food packag-ing.”
The business session closed with Rue Patel and Mike Murdock, both previously with Gen-eral Mills, who talked about “Supply Chain Challenges and Solutions.” RThe focused on changes they made at General Mills that also benefitted their suppliers.
“What if you and your supplier looked at value and make the process and value chain more efficient,” Patel asked. “Do you call them on a regular basis to see how things are go-ing, communicate when were aren’t any issues?”
As an example, Patel talked about the $10 million spend General Mills had on cardboard from Weyerheauser.
“They would never tell us when trucks were running late, plus there were inconsistent quality and communication problems,” said Patel. “We kept issues piling up before we would contact them. We had to change that.
“So, we set some goals, to reduce total cost by 20% and fix quality, delivery and communi-cation,” he added. “But we want to make sure Weyerheauser’s profitability and margins remained the same and we wanted to partner with them. We wanted to make sure we could talk with them, that our operators can talk with their operators. That created trans-parency. We reduced our spend by 20% and they maintained their profitability.”
“We become successful by learning about our suppliers,” Murdock observed. “In many cases, we were purchasing the cheapest component and at the end of the day, we were costing us money. We started leveraging our suppliers’ expertise and appreciating their value. We were there to ask what we can do better to get better outcomes.”
Awards Dinner
There will also be a number of events outside of the meetings, including golf tournaments, outside activities, and the NAPIM Fun Night. The Black Tie Ault Award dinner, with the presentation of the prestigious Ault and Pioneer Awards, is always among the highlights.
NAPIM began by celebrating the 2020 award honorees, including Vivy Da Costa of hubergroup, who received the Ault Award, the industry’s most prestigious honor.
“It is with deep emotion that I accept this award,” she said. “I have a feeling of gratitude and elation that my efforts are recognized by my peers. I always have loved this industry.”
Next up were the honorees for 2022, beginning with the Printing Ink Pioneer Awards, which were presented to five people for their service to the industry: Tony Ameo of ECKART; Larry Bykerk of Apollo Colors; Dennis Sweet of Sun Chemical; Bill McPartland of Wise Technical; and myself.
The 2022 Ault Award was then presented to Jim Leitch of Wikoff Color, who had served as NAPIM president for two and a half years.
“It’s beyond what I can comprehend,” said Leitch. “I want to thank everybody here. Everyone has always willing to say yes and be willing to help.”
After receiving his award, Leitch presented an award to John Copeland, who is retiring after 44 years in the ink industry, including the last six and a half years as NAPIM’s executive director.
“John did the best of his ability to make everyone successful,” Leitch said.
“I can’t thank John Copeland enough for his help with the transition,” added Gregg Dahleen oif Central Ink, who is the current NAPIM president.
“Everyone here, you’re very important to the printing ink industry, and some of the best people in our industry,” Copeland said n receiving the award. “It’s been a great honor to serve as executive director.”
With talks centering on a wide range of topics, from the state of the US economy to internships and solving packaging challenges, NAPIM put together a slate of speakers who gave attendees a lot to consider.
There was also change in how NAPIM works. NAPIM has chosen to go with SEVEN12 Management, a full-service association management company. Molly Alton Mullins, CEO of SEVEN12 Management, serves as NAPIM executive director, and she said she was happy with how the convention went.
“This was my first NAPIM Convention, as SEVEN12 Management just came on board to manage the association in January 2022,”Mullins said. “It was a wonderful opportunity to meet everyone face to face and learn more about NAPIM and how the association, and the convention, brings value to their business. I look forward to building on the success of this year’s show and making it even better next year.”
“NAPIM’s Convention this past week was the first time the NAPIM community has gotten together in more than two years,” Mullins added. “The energy, the excitement, and the engagement were felt by all during the course of the show that included four days of education, networking, and opportunities to explore St. Petersburg.”
George R. Fuchs, NAPIM’s director – regulatory affairs and technology, said that it was great that the 2022 Annual Convention brought NAPIM back to the live event format.
“Everyone attending seemed particularly happy to renew acquaintances and friendships and build new ones,” Fuchs said. “Once again, this year’s program was wide ranging addressing multiple topics of interest to our attendees. This event is specifically designed to provide maximum networking value and the attendees all took advantage. The Vinoy hotel in St. Petersburg, FL proved to be another excellent venue for our event. The hotel’s location in the downtown allowed for attendees to walk to many local attractions and restaurants located within minutes of the hotel.”
“Offsite events, receptions and the Awards Dinner were welcome, in-person events after two years of absence,” added Fuchs. “The Awards Dinner was a personal highlight for me. I was extremely gratified with those selected for the Printing Ink Pioneer award as well as being able to congratulate two Ault Award winners. Both Jim Leitch of Wikoff Color and Vivy DaCosta of hubergroup are personal friends, industry stalwarts and incredibly deserving of these awards. I commend and congratulate both of them.”
Keynote Talk and State of the Industry
The NAPIM Convention opened with a keynote talk by Billy Riggs, who focused on “Magic of Change & Sustainability.” Combining magic tricks with motiviational thoughts, Riggs talked about the importance of maintaining integrity.
“Your life is moved by a host of invisible forces, starting with your character,” Riggs noted. “You have to ruthlessly protect your integrity. You can’t allow yourself to be a victim of change. You have to maintain your integrity, improve your attitude, abandon self-doubt and never give up.”
Next up was the State of the Industry Report, delivered by NAIM Management Information Committee members Bryce Kristo, EVP, CFO and general affairs for INX International Ink Co., and John Jilek Jr., president and COO of Inksolutions.
Kristo noted that inflation and supply chain concerns are adding to the list of issues for ink companies and their suppliers.
“Supply chain issues remain prevalent and continued volatility is being driven by unforeseen events. We have to balance pricing costs and selling price,” added Kristo.
Kristo noted that 60% of respondents plan on adding equipment, 70% replacing equipment and 70% adding employees, while 80% of respondents expect sales increases of 5% or more, most likely driven by price increases and COVID recovery
Jilek noted that 95% of the survey’s respondents saw growth in 2022, while 71.4% of respondents said COVID affected their travel budgets for their company and 90% say they will use remote and virtual communication as an option to face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, 62.5% see flexo moving to water-based due to raw material volatility as well as sustainability.
Fuchs said that feedback on the opening day talks were excellent.
“Our keynote, Billy Riggs, started the event with an amazing demonstration of magical skills while delivering an important message regarding the need for self-confidence, drive and perseverance – a truly inspiring and entertaining presentation,” said Fuchs.
“John Jilek Jr. of Inksolutions and Bryce Kristo of INX delivered an insightful and interesting State of the Industry report. The SOTI is one of the highlights of the Annual Meeting because it focuses solely on the printing ink manufacturing space,” he added.
Fuchs noted that the business sessions on Sunday and Monday morning focused on understanding and attracting younger people to the industry.
“Both George Gilsan of Appalachian State and Tim Heath of University of South Florida imparted key insights that will be extremely beneficial in helping ink and supplier companies understand what the newest generation of college graduates value and look for in a potential employer,” he said.
“On Monday I presented an overview of current market data, printing ink-related technical and regulatory issues. I was followed by Rue Patel and Mike Murdoch, both supply chain experts in the food packaging space. Rue and Mike shared key supply chain management information gained from their years of experience in area of critical importance to the ink industry.”
Business Sessions
The next two days featured business sessions moderated by Ralph Nappi that covered a wide range of topics, beginning with an insightful talk by Dr. Michael Youngblood, professor of economics from Rock Valley College, who discussed "The U.S. Economic Challenge, Looking Back and Forward."
Dr. Youngblood noted that the big three economic statistics are production of goods and services, unemployment and inflation, which is at 8%. He pointed out that during the pandemic, lockdowns created mass unemployment and lower incomes on the demand side, while on the supply side, some businesses closed due to COVID outbreaks.
“The recession of 2020 was the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, with $2 trillion in lost output,’ said Dr. Youngblood. “Restaurant reservations had already fallen 73% before the government mandated that restaurants closed. It was also the shortest recession. Over 95% of the $2 trillion gap in output has been closed.”
Between February and April 2020, 25.3 million jobs were lost, and the unemployment rate was 14.8% in April 2020. Dr, Youngblood observed that the pandemic led to a higher unemployment rate for women, who are more represented in the leisure and hospitality industries.
“There were four main reasons people left the labor force during the pandemic,” he added. “Fear of COVID, child care due to school closures, enhanced unemployment benefits and early retirements. Employment is still 2.8% below where it would be.”
As a result of the Great Resignation, there are currently 11 million job openings, leading to increased costs of employing workers. In addition, workers are spending 17.1% less time at the work place as they had previously.
Dr. Youngblood closed his talk by noting that some changes created by the pandemic will likely continue going forward.
“There are behaviors that are likely to persist,” he said. “We expect working from home to continue as workers like it. As a result, employers expect to reduce work space. More online shopping will continue, especially groceries, as they have continued to be popular. Consumer like curbside delivery. Telemedicine increased and 20% of adults have had a telemedicine appointment in last month. Online learning is also growing, and home food preparation is also continuing to grow.”
Dr. George Gilsan of Appalachian State University followed with an excellent talk on "How to Strengthen Your Company’s Internship Program."
“An internship program can develop a pipeline of employees. The first challenge is knowing what an internship is – it’s a contract between your company, the university and the student,” said Dr. Gilsan. “The student must have an on-site supervisor, with defined duties, expectations and hours. There must be an evaluation of the student’s performance and the company must provide a safe, secure non-discriminatory workplace.”
“The second challenge is that students don’t know the ink industry,” he added. “That’s a problem because ink is critical to the printing industry. You need to put your brand in front of them – supply ink for the school’s labs, participate in school career fairs, provide job postings. The third challenge is the gender imbalance. Two-thirds of graphic enrollments are women. Ink manufacturing is not. Women are coming into our industry and we need to adapt to it.”
“The fourth challenge is that universities are experiencing a dramatic increase in ethnic diversity,” Dr. Gilsan added. “Large numbers of Hispanics. If students don’t feel empowered, they will be timid. They have to know that mistakes do happen. Let them know you want them to take initiative.”
Dr. Gilsan said that students know what they want from an employer.
“Money still matters, as student debt is a huge burden,” he concluded. “They want to know if your company is profitable. They want an opportunity for growth and want to like the people they work with. That has become very important.”
Timothy Heath of the University of South Florida closed the first Business Session with his talk, “The Promise and Perils of Accelerating Rates of Change.”
“The world is changing. Beware – anti-change biases breed not just stagnation, but regression to worse times,” Heath said.
The Monday Business Session began with the Technical Associate Member (TAM)
Breakfast, which featured an ink industry CEO Panel with Sun Chemical’s Chris Parrilli, INX International Ink’s John Hrdlick and Wikoff Color’s Geoff Peters. The CEOs faced a wide range of topics, including the idea of vertical integration, which could be costly.
“Vertical integration is part of our philosophy,” said Parrilli. “Building a greenfield site is expensive. When this all balances out, will customers want to pay for it.
“The cost of producing our own raw materials would be a significant cost,” said Hrdlick. “It would take a lot of time for us.”
“If we have capital to invest, we’ll invest it in equipment, new facilities and acquisitions that will help us grow,” Peters said.
How the pandemic changed the way people work has been significant.
“The pandemic allowed for a change of thinking,” Parrilli observed. “I understand why people want flexibility. We understand people’s wants have changed. We are trying to find the middle ground. Our people are our most important resource. It’s amazing what a team can do when under stress.”
“People want flexible hours and time off, and we are adjusting our shift schedules,” Hrd-lick said. “I can’t say enough for our employees who came to work every day. We have fur-ther developed our internship program on the management side. There are certain parts of our team we are strengthening.”
Internships also came up in the discussion.
We believe heavily in internships, and have our Wikoff management training,” Peters said. “We are employee owned and we believe it makes a difference.”
“When you bring people in it’s how you treat them, what their aspirations are using in-ternships,” Parrilli noted.
“We use radio and geofencing for recruiting people for manufacturing,” Hrdlick said.
Ultimately, companies are rethinking how they do business.
“Transparency and communication is what helps us get through this,” Parrilli said. “I think that transparency in our business is so much greater than it used to be.
“We expect our customers will rethink giving 100% to one company,” Hrdlick noted. “There are certain promises we can’t do anymore in our contracts with our customers.
“We have always tried to have more than one source for our raw materials, and we need more than one country,” said Peters. “We put out more product than we did before, and we couldn’t have done what we did without the support of everyone here. I want to thank all the suppliers for the excellent job they did on the supply chain during the pandemic.”
Fuchs was up next with his discussion on regulations, including state laws and food pack-aging.
“Washington State wants 0.000064 ug/l parts per quadrillion for PCBs. I don’t think they can do that,” said Fuchs. “I explained that you can’t use offset inks on a flexo process, and I told them you will drive every printer from the state of Washington out of business.”
“The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has long realized they don’t have printing inks covered,” Fuchs noted. “We have submitted guidance. I will say that the FDA is the best of the federal regulatory agencies. They recognize the value of print on food packag-ing.”
The business session closed with Rue Patel and Mike Murdock, both previously with Gen-eral Mills, who talked about “Supply Chain Challenges and Solutions.” RThe focused on changes they made at General Mills that also benefitted their suppliers.
“What if you and your supplier looked at value and make the process and value chain more efficient,” Patel asked. “Do you call them on a regular basis to see how things are go-ing, communicate when were aren’t any issues?”
As an example, Patel talked about the $10 million spend General Mills had on cardboard from Weyerheauser.
“They would never tell us when trucks were running late, plus there were inconsistent quality and communication problems,” said Patel. “We kept issues piling up before we would contact them. We had to change that.
“So, we set some goals, to reduce total cost by 20% and fix quality, delivery and communi-cation,” he added. “But we want to make sure Weyerheauser’s profitability and margins remained the same and we wanted to partner with them. We wanted to make sure we could talk with them, that our operators can talk with their operators. That created trans-parency. We reduced our spend by 20% and they maintained their profitability.”
“We become successful by learning about our suppliers,” Murdock observed. “In many cases, we were purchasing the cheapest component and at the end of the day, we were costing us money. We started leveraging our suppliers’ expertise and appreciating their value. We were there to ask what we can do better to get better outcomes.”
Awards Dinner
There will also be a number of events outside of the meetings, including golf tournaments, outside activities, and the NAPIM Fun Night. The Black Tie Ault Award dinner, with the presentation of the prestigious Ault and Pioneer Awards, is always among the highlights.
NAPIM began by celebrating the 2020 award honorees, including Vivy Da Costa of hubergroup, who received the Ault Award, the industry’s most prestigious honor.
“It is with deep emotion that I accept this award,” she said. “I have a feeling of gratitude and elation that my efforts are recognized by my peers. I always have loved this industry.”
Next up were the honorees for 2022, beginning with the Printing Ink Pioneer Awards, which were presented to five people for their service to the industry: Tony Ameo of ECKART; Larry Bykerk of Apollo Colors; Dennis Sweet of Sun Chemical; Bill McPartland of Wise Technical; and myself.
The 2022 Ault Award was then presented to Jim Leitch of Wikoff Color, who had served as NAPIM president for two and a half years.
“It’s beyond what I can comprehend,” said Leitch. “I want to thank everybody here. Everyone has always willing to say yes and be willing to help.”
After receiving his award, Leitch presented an award to John Copeland, who is retiring after 44 years in the ink industry, including the last six and a half years as NAPIM’s executive director.
“John did the best of his ability to make everyone successful,” Leitch said.
“I can’t thank John Copeland enough for his help with the transition,” added Gregg Dahleen oif Central Ink, who is the current NAPIM president.
“Everyone here, you’re very important to the printing ink industry, and some of the best people in our industry,” Copeland said n receiving the award. “It’s been a great honor to serve as executive director.”