The Dairy Mail wins two Pica Awards

The Dairy Mail, a magazine for the primary dairy industry in South Africa, has been honoured with two more Pica Award accolades. The awards are presented annually to all member publications of the Magazine Publishers Association of South Africa (MPASA). This year's ceremony was held on 15 November at Emperor's Palace in Johannesburg.

The Dairy Mail is published by Agri Connect and competed in the business-to-business category for publications aimed at resource-based industries. The publication won Picas in the business-to-business publishing excellence: resource-based industries; and business-to-business editorial excellence: feature writer of the year - Liza Bohlmann.

Excellence is the cornerstone

"It's rewarding to celebrate Liza and the team's achievements. It is not about what we do, but what is achieved, and excellence forms the cornerstone of our highly targeted publications and communication platforms," says Erika Alberts, managing director of Agri Connect, publisher of The Dairy Mail.

Agri Connect is owned by the Milk Producers' Organisation (MPO) and publishes magazines aimed at primary agriculture, which also include titles like Wildlife Ranching, Red Meat/Rooivleis and Die Wolboer/The Wool Farmer.

"The main reason for The Dairy Mail's success is that it always has the dairy farmer's interest at heart. Winning awards has never been an objective. Meeting the needs of dairy farmers has resulted in all the awards the magazine won over the years," says Bertus de Jongh, CEO of the MPO and chairman of The Dairy Mail's editorial committee.

Critical factor in running the organisation

Tom Turner, chairman of the MPO says: "The Dairy Mail is a critical success factor in the effective running of our membership-based organisation. I am very pleased that our hardworking team has received external recognition for their excellence from an independent organisation."

"I'm very proud of the team and The Dairy Mail was in a tight race for pole position in most of the categories we entered, scoring two Picas and two highly commended awards," says Liza Bohlmann, editor of The Dairy Mail. "Since entering the competition for the first time, the magazine and its staff have won 15 Picas in total. The road to winning a Pica starts with creating great copy, great layout, achieving printing excellence and partnering with an advertiser base that responds to these efforts. Publishing a magazine that is read and loved by its readers makes it possible to achieve financial success, and to invest in the right tools and right people to do an outstanding job."