Australia's 2017 catalogue awards was - as always - a contest of big budgets and small, long runs and short, giants and minnows of the print industry.

The 26th annual Australasian Catalogue Association awards were presented at a gala event at Melbourne Exhibition Centre attended by a record 734 guests.

For the printers in the room - who rightly see the event as more about their customers - it was predictable that the two newly-merged heatset mega-companies went home laden with awards, PMP leading the tally but closely followed by the IVE Group tally scored by Franklin Web and Blue Star.

It's also an event where entries with huge print orders - such as the 6.98 million run executed by PMP for retailer Aldi and Franklin's 5.4 million for longstanding client Target - can be pipped by much smaller ones.

Winner of the general fashion category, a catalogue printed for R.M. Williams by PMP, had a print order of only 30,000 copies, as did the "megalogue" they printed for The Educational Experience.

Two pieces tied for the digital print category - a personalised Christmas catalogue for Myer - of which 50,000 were printed - and a longer-run PMP production for Dan Murphy; honours shared!

A judges' favourite, BCF's fashion apparel catalogue won its category

and also an excellence in craft award for Franklin Web.

The "catalogue retailer of the year" awards went for the Franklin-printed David Jones kitchen brand book (pictured), and Myer and Chemist Warehouse, both printed by PMP.

The Fairfax Media-sponsored "agency of the year" award went to TBWA Sydney & Maud, best young designer to Zoran Serovski and Kathrina Mabilangan, and best young talent to Leah Mammoliti of Redhanded.