Roland press helps sets Guinness World Record
By Canadian Packaging Staff
Automation Design & Innovation Controls/Drives Ann Bessemans Belgian Post Group bpost Guinness Guinness World Record International Women's Day stamp Roland 704 3B P 2/2 printing press Roland PressA record breaking stamp gets printed on a ROLAND press.
When Belgian Post Group (bpost) released its new stamp honoring International Women’s Day on March 8, 2014, it also earned itself a Guinness World Record.
The stamp depicts the face of a young lady and a background—formed out of 606 complete words.
The Guinness World Records entry (click HERE) says: “The most words on a postage stamp is 606 words in four languages taken from the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).”
The stamp is nondenominated. The numeral “1” in a circle and the word “world” indicate that it pays the international rate for letters weighing up to 50 grams.
The stamp – with all of its tiny but important words – was printed on a ROLAND press.
Bpost manager of stamp production Pierre Leempoel says they made the stamp “Because we consider it a diversity of utmost importance. For the design we called in the designer Ann Bessemans. She used a very special technique: a combination of gridded letters (for the lady’s face) and a digital microtext (for the background). Right away a scoop in stamp land.”
He continues: “An adjudicator sent by Guinness World Records, counted the number of valid words. He did so with an iron hand: incomplete words and words that were too short were dropped. But we lay hold on the world record of ‘stamp having the most readable words’. We actually do not yet know if we will figure in the famous book: only a happy few survive the selection.”
According to Leempoel, this stamp was printed on a ROLAND 704 3B P 2/2 press.
“We have been using the four color press since 2000. It always has been a very reliable machine and accounts for 15 percent of our production – including the stamp of the new King,” he says.
“We printed 108,000 sheets of the world record stamp – with five stamps each. They can be used for standard letters to worldwide destinations. If you are interested, you can find them in our Filaboutiques and in our e-shop.”
For information on bpoost (Belgian Post Group), visit www.philately.bpost.be.
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