Malcolm Rae, founder of UV curing systems manufacturer GEW, has been announced the winner of this year’s Global Achievement Award. The award is the most prestigious accolade in the annual Label Industry Global Awards and recognises ‘an individual who has made a key contribution to the promotion and growth of the label industry and has been a high-profile industry influencer and motivator’.
The Label Awards panel, which consists of the heads of major label industry organisations around the world, commented: ‘Malcolm Rae is a worthy winner of the Global Achievement Award. This recognises his unique contribution, through GEW, the company he founded, to the narrow web industry’s transition to UV curing and to the subsequent technological development of the UV curing industry.’
Malcolm Rae founded GEW in March 1991, creating what was to become the largest supplier of UV curing equipment to the narrow web label industry worldwide. Over a 35-year career, he has helped enable the transformation of label printing from primarily water-based to majority UV ink by forging long-lasting preferred supplier relationships with almost every major printing machine provider in the narrow web industry.
Still family owned, GEW employs over 150 people worldwide, at three UK manufacturing sites and two satellite offices, with sales, service and distribution serving over 60 countries.
A chartered mechanical engineer, Rae holds 21 international patents covering GEW’s key products, including the ubiquitous E2C, which is installed on 30,000 label print stations globally.
His inventions have helped to pioneer the commercialisation of many, now commonplace, UV technologies such as UV cassettes, electronic power supplies and exclusively air-cooled lamps. More recently, Rae steered GEW towards a strong focus on UV-LED curing, making the lamps exchangeable with arc UV lamps to help converters make the transition to UV-LED technology.
Rae is renowned worldwide as an expert on UV curing, having presented, exhibited and lectured at label associations, shows and conferences over his 35 years in the business. Under his stewardship GEW has won a number of label industry awards and the Queen’s Award for Export.
Rae was nominated for the award by many influential figures from across the global label community, which is testament to the fact that he is held in high regard as a leader, role model and mentor to many people across the industry.
The award will be presented at a gala awards evening on the first day of Labelexpo Europe 2023 in Brussels.