Two Lanarkshire youngsters have been honoured with Apprentice of the Year Awards.
Print Scotland, the trade association and voice of Scotland’s graphic communication industry, honoured four outstanding young apprentices in its sixth annual Scottish Print Apprentice of the Year awards – and two of them are from Lanarkshire.
The occasion is part of its mission to represent the Scottish print community and to highlight the profile of future leaders of the industry.
Robby McCann, 20, who won the Print Administration, followed in his father’s footsteps by joining him at CCL Labels in East Kilbride.
He enjoys learning many new skills and the variety of the work and once qualified wants to get involved in the company’s graphic design department.
He said his print apprenticeship offers a "great opportunity to learn new things and the variety of the work".
Garry Richmond, Director of Print Scotland, told Lanarkshire Live : “Fighting and overcoming the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been at the heart of Scotland’s print businesses over the last 18 months.
"As essential workers, they have performed superbly.
“We continue to believe that the industry needs to employ more apprentices to sustain Scotland’s print sector by encouraging more apprentices from an increasingly diverse range of backgrounds.
“These awards recognise outstanding achievement amongst the young people who represent the next generation of our leaders of Scotland’s print sector.
"While we have been unable, again, to hold our usual annual Apprentice Awards as an occasion, the certificates were mailed and presented to the winners by their respective managers and mentors.
“Print Scotland’s sincere thanks goes to our sponsors David McGinlay of Muller Martini and Stephen Paul of Antalis for supplying the prizes.
“I should also like to put on record our debt of gratitude to Jim McKenzie of Ultimate Learning Solutions who has done a tremendous job in rapidly getting into his new role as Assessor and making a great success of it.”
Nineteen-year-old Jay Findlater won the Press (Machine Printing) award works for Newsprinters at Eurocentral and was selected following a recruitment open day run by East Kilbride Group Training Association.
He enjoys the opportunity to learn new skills working for a big print industry company, especially in the variety of the work and learning about newspaper production.
Once qualified, he aims to be a fully-fledged printer, running the newspaper presses. A recent highlight was being involved in the re-build of a folder.
He said: “A massive job, and very interesting.
“I knew nothing about print before I started, and I did not appreciate how interesting and technical the production of newspapers is.”
Print Scotland’s President, Iain Robertson, congratulated the winners and wished them highly successful careers as the industry’s leaders of tomorrow.
He added: “Despite these highly unusual circumstances, we continue to celebrate the achievements of our young colleagues in acquiring future-proof skills to take Scotland’s print industry forward.
“Our members have demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 lockdown that print is an essential element in a civilised society.
The print industry in Scotland has a real future across a range of skillsets and needs a constant flow of high-quality and motivated apprentices in even greater numbers, and from an increasingly diverse range of backgrounds, to fulfil its potential.”
