David Currie receives Lifetime Achievement award

In front of an audience of nearly 400 industry peers, David Currie, founder and chair of Currie Group, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement award at last week’s National Print Awards, organised by the Visual Media Association (VMA) and held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Brisbane.

The citation for what was one of the Major Awards of the night stated: ‘Across more than five decades, Currie has employed generations of Australians, transformed the technological capability of the local industry and built one of the nation’s most successful family-owned print businesses. But perhaps more importantly, he has done so with resilience, generosity and an unwavering commitment to people, technology and industry. David Currie’s story is one of grit, instinct, loyalty and transformation: a story woven into the fabric of the Australian print and visual media industry. His impact on the industry itself cannot be overstated’.

David Currie accepted the award with grace and humour, even joking about the fact Currie Group and HP were the sponsors of this particular award.

All 34 industry awards were subsequently announced to the wider industry via a series of VMA LinkedIn posts, all starting with ‘big cheers for….’ The other Major Awards category winners included:

Workplace Culture and Wellbeing Achievement – Konica Minolta — An Insight Driven Approach, ‘proving that great print starts with great people and a workplace culture worth celebrating’;

Environmental Sustainability Achievement: Platypus Print Packaging, ‘showing that print can look good, do good and tread a little lighter on the planet’.

Industry Employee of the Year:  Mark Rolls, IVE Group, ‘clearly the kind of person every team wants in their corner’.

Industry Supplier of the Year: Spicers Australia, ‘supplier legends keeping the industry moving, one brilliant partnership at a time’.

Industry Woman of the Year: Katherine Puttock, Lane Communications, ‘leading the way and raising the bar for women in our industry’.

Emerging Talent of the Year: Angas Adcroft, MCC Labels and Laila Stevens, Eckersley Print Group, ‘emerging talents making their mark and reminding us the future of print is in very good hands’.

Judges Award: Allain Poole and the Press Print team for their Jordan & John Wedding Invite, ‘the standout entry across every category and a beautiful reminder that print can be personal, powerful and full of heart, with just the right touch of wow!’.

Press Print were also received the Print21 Printer of the Year award for ‘officially bringing to us, the Magic of Print!’.

Kellie Northwood, VMA CEO, thanked every award entrant, every attendee, every sponsor, saying ‘if we share and grow, we’ll be stronger together’. She also paid tribute to retiring VMA Board member Rodney Frost and publicly welcomed Andrew Price from Rawson Print Group as his replacement.

Acknowledgement of David Currie’s Lifetime Achievement comes at a time when Currie Group itself is going from strength to strength, recently announcing the addition of new brands and products, further strengthening the company’s end-to-end solutions.

Effective from 1 July 2026, three business units previously within the Aldus Group – Paragon Inks, API Foils as well as Pad Printing, acquired as part of the Milford Astor business, will transfer across, and be managed by Currie Group, seeing them now manage and be responsible for foils, thermal transfer ribbons, Paragon flexographic Inks and industrial decorating & printing solutions.

These three product categories will come under the expanded responsibility of Mark Daws, as the head of labels and packaging A/NZ.

All of Currie Group’s commercial digital portfolio, commercial finishing equipment and lithographic consumables products will also now be rolled up into a new Commercial and Sign & Display group that will be led by Paul Whitehead, alongside the existing sign and display business.

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