DELGA DELIVERS - Print Business

the magazine for forward thinking printingFebruary 2013

music retail is in turmoil but

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HEI_SXDrupaStampAd_21x297_LH.indd 1 12/06/2012 14:53

FEBRUARY 2013NEWS Press manufacturers tojoin up; Efi builds on inkjet 4

I&I XL for Delta; GLX forChesapeake; Fuji aims totransform corrugated 10

COVER STORY Delga deliverswith music and medecine 16

CHINA Focus on the countrywith the world’s fastestgrowing economy 28

PEOPLE New focus for StBride’s Institute 33

PAPER Paperlinx takes stepsto new look operation 34

WE ARE ALL DIGITAL PRINTERS NOW. At least as far as the Ipex

organisers are concerned. Litho is being pushed aside in plans for the

2014 show. Research that it has commissioned shows that digital is very

much in the ascendency, its own findings from those attending Ipex in

2010 indicate that relatively few visitors wanted to see litho presses;

consequently Ipex is to be the first print show to focus on digital print in a

multi channel world.

Of course, this comes with barrow loads of expediency. Show director

Trevor Crawford talks of not wanting to be a Drupa-Lite and points out

that the graveyard is full of big shows that didn’t change. But only a few

months ago, he would have been happy to have had the big litho press

companies present, even proposing extensive engineering to the Excel

exhibition centre to ensure that presses had a stable floor on which to

perform. But the Drupa-Lite option was switched off.

And so we are all digital printers now. That research reveals that three-

quarters of printers are digital. Or at least have some kind of digital

printing device. It doesn’t say how many printers had some kind of litho

printing device, nor if they are well equipped with the folders, stitchers

and laminators suited to coping with litho print.

We have always been urging the importance of embracing change, that

print must not rest on the glories of its past. Explaining the new business

models, applications and print’s place in the new multi channel world is

exactly our raison d’etre. And for that we welcome the dawning of the

light in Informa’s thinking.

But the reality is not digital lives and litho dies. It is how they work

together, how printers work with customers, how print fits in a digital

world. Ipex should not throw out the baby with the bath water.

GARETH WARD Editor

COMMENTARY

EDITORIAL

COMMERCIAL

GARETH WARD 01580 236456 • 07866 [email protected]

DEBBIE WARD 01580 236456 • 07711 [email protected] • printbusinessmedia.co.uk

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Published by Print Business Media Ltd. 3 Zion Cottages, Ranters Lane, Goudhurst, Kent TN17 1HR. © Copyright Print Business Media Ltd 2012. All rights reserved. Apply for T&Cs.

News

4 February 2013 www.printbusinessmagazine.co.uk

Ryobi and Mitsubishi join forces to test the water of cooperationRyobi and Mitsubishi Litho Presses are to explore ways to cooperate, a further indication of the shrinking printing press sector across the globe. The two businesses have agreed on a six-month inves-tigation which may result in a formal agreement of some kind, ranging from sharing manufacturing and research to establishment of a printing press company where both are shareholders.

The two Japanese companies have suffered as recession has cut demand for presses, as exchange rates have hurt the competitive-ness of Japanese machinery and as digital printing continues to expand. At one point Mitsubi-shi was expected to miss Drupa last year, eventually deciding to participate but with a smaller presence than previously.

Rather than see their position continue to be undermined,

a statement says that a joint venture company could be set up to improve the competitive-ness of sheetfed offset printing machinery, enhance the scale of operations and solidify the management base.

Ryobi invested heavily in manufacturing facilities in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. It also has experience of collaborative manufacture. It currently builds Presstek machines; Fuji’s Jetpress 720 is a Ryobi in terms of sheet trans-port and delving further back, the company produced KBA designed sheetfed machines. Mitsubishi’s, while up to date, are not as extensive and the vast corporation might make better use of a factory which once produced railway locomo-tives. However, the two plants are only a few miles apart in the Hiroshima Prefecture in south-ern Japan.

MLP’s experience in printing presses dates back more than 50 years when it began building a Marinoni (later Harris) press under licence from the then French manufacturer. Mitsubi-shi also builds web offset and newspaper presses, but these are not covered by this agreement.

The product ranges are largely complementary. Ryobi has grown from small offset presses to become a powerhouse in B2 and SRA1. It has also launched a B1 format 1050 four-, five- or six-colour press, but with limited success as worldwide demand for presses collapsed. Mitsubishi by contrast is strong-est in the Size 3 format, with a B2 press that has also proved popular. It also offers Size 5 and Size 6 machines, though these are unknown in Europe.

The two share the belief that developing markets will increase demand for new presses, with

cost a determining factor, while the developed markets will opt for higher specification products.

Both have also been investi-gating digital printing. Ryobi entering a collaboration with Miyakoshi on a fully digital press and adding Kodak inkjet heads to a litho press. Mitsubi-shi has shown the prototype of a digital press for on demand print applications, but has provided no further details. Both compa-nies have worked with LED UV curing technology.

Ryobi’s latest results point to further losses in its printing operations with sales falling by 21.8% in the first half of the current financial year. It blamed the continuing reces-sion and sluggish overseas sales, particularly in Japan. Direct comparisons with Mitsubishi are difficult because of the way that data is presented.

Apex goes digital with Konica Minolta partnershipapex digital Graphics, UK distributor for Ryobi, is to distribute Konica Minolta colour digital presses.

The agreement follows requests from Apex custom-ers for the Hemel Hempstead company to add a digital press to the CTP, software and support that is already offered.

Sales and marketing director Neil Handforth says: “We have looked at several possible digital solutions to enhance our product offering and satisfy the needs of our user base. Following detailed discussions and signifi-cant testing of the devices, we believe that the Konica Minolta range offers both excellent print quality when compared to other digital product, and competi-tively priced equipment – a

critical part of the equation, of course.”

Apex will install a C7000, the 70pp unit which is the mainstay of the range, and will include colour management and inte-gration services with the press. “We do not want to be a box

shifter,” says Handforth. “A lot of Ryobi customers are in the B3 segment. They have been putting in digital equipment alongside their litho presses to offer that very short run colour service, and these customers have been asking us to supply

something that meets their needs.”

Apex has the experience in Rips, workflow and colour management software to add value to the KM machines. Installation and service will initially be handled by Konica Minolta, though once the popu-lation of machines reaches the right level, service and support will switch to Apex.

“We looked at a number of options and chose Konica Minolta because it has a very good product and reputation and we feel that Konica Minolta offers the most litho-like quality of any of the digital presses we looked at,” he adds.

Interest has already been running well, with the first sale not far off, he explains.

Neil Handforth shakes on the deal with Caroline Mannering of Konica Minolta and Bob Usher of Apex Digital Graphics.

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News


eFI on course with inkjet plans as wide format and narrow web growEFI’s transFormatIon into an inkjet company is clearly seen as revenue from its wide format and narrow web inkjet operations accounts for almost half its overall sales, rising 33% in the last year alone.

At the same time sales from the original Fiery business dropped 15% to slightly more than a third of revenues. The productivity software arm of the business also increased revenue by 27% aided by acqui-sitions of MIS suppliers Prism and Alphagraph. The purchase of Technique came too late for these results.

While the current year will be marked by the continuing growth in inkjet and produc-

tivity software and away from Fiery, it will also be notable for the company quitting its 294,000 sq ft purpose built Foster City facility in California. This has been sold for $179.6 million with an agreement that EFI can continue to occupy the

site for a year rent free. It will use the time to organise the move to a new headquarters, a location that it has discovered, but not yet confirmed.

None of this has slowed the company’s progress with year on year revenue up 10% to $652 million and pretax profits rising from $30.4 million to $35.0 million.

EFI anticipates the trends continuing: industrial inkjet will grow around 7%; produc-tivity software will be up 15% while Fiery will fall by 5% in the first quarter of this finan-cial year. Fiery revenues have been better than expected and will be boosted by the launch of a new Xerox press in the next

few weeks. But it is with inkjet that the company’s future really lies. It made its first purchase in industrial inkjet when buying ceramic tiles printer Cretaprint and it will not be the last. “We are watching several segments of industrial printing that we can enter in the future,” he told analysts after the figures were published.

“There is a lot to do in the area of packaging where we are only present in labels.”

In all there might be another four acquisitions in this finan-cial year “give or take a couple”. Says Gecht: “We are one of the few buyers. A lot of companies are focusing on defence; we are playing a lot more open field.”

Guy Gecht: “we are playing a lot more open field.”

OTM puts HP T200 to work on Npower contractEnErgy provIdEr Npower is to redesign its statements and mailings to take advantage of the high speed personalisation and colour capabilities of the HP T200 press at print provider Opus Trust Marketing.

The Leicester company has renewed its supplier contract with Npower for a further three years and the ability to develop

the design of the statements thanks to the colour possibilities of the HP inkjet web has been a key element. The company wants to create clearer commu-nications for its customers using the inkjet press.

Linda Scott, OTM CEO, adds: “We are delighted that Npower has chosen to continue working with us for another three years.

The contract renewal is testa-ment to the high service levels and continuous improvement we have brought to Npower’s customer communications for more than a decade.”

The announcement comes after Communisis announced that it had signed Nationwide Building Society for a nine-year transactional and marketing

print deal from its Speke opera-tion. This houses the company’s HP T410 inkjet web presses and also involves a switch to sophis-ticated colour printing.

The printer has worked with the building society for several years and grows that relation-ship by absorbing Nationwide’s inhouse production into Communisis.

Xeikon considers an approach that may lead to a takeover biddIgItal prEss manufacturer Xeikon has received an approach which may lead to a full scale takeover for the Belgium based, Dutch traded company. Shares have been suspended from Euronext Amsterdam. Around 66% of the shares are owned by Punch International, registered in Brussels.

The value of Xeikon shares had risen a quarter in the week following the new year, indi-cating strong interest in the

company. For its part the busi-ness has only said that it has received an approach which might lead to a takeover bid for all its shares, but has provided no further details.

At Drupa the company showed the early stages of development of a high viscosity liquid toner digital press. This has the potential for high speed, low cost digital printing and the concept has attracted paral-lel developments from Océ,

Heidelberg and Miyakoshi.Xeikon enjoyed a strong

Drupa leading to a rise in Q3

sales of 19%, although at the nine-month point year to date revenues were running 4.8% below 2011. Sales for the whole of 2011 reached €139.3 million.

As well as the digital press business, based on the webfed electrophotographic machines for document and packaging or labelling applications, the company includes the Basys conventional plattesetter busi-ness and Thermoflex for flexo platemaking.

News

www.printbusinessmedia.co.uk February 2013 7

HP first as digital newspapers are produced on its T230 in ItalyThe firsT hP inkjeT web press dedicated to produc-ing newspapers has gone into production in Italy. The T230, the smallest of the family, is in operation at CSQ, a newspaper production plant jointly owned by the publishers of the Gionali di Brescia and L’Eco di Bergamo in northern Italy.

The site already produces Dutch paper De Telegraaf and Bild am Sonntag during the summer season on its Wifag web offset presses. Moving to digital will enable CSG to print the very much shorter runs required during the off season months and by this means ring fence the contracts for the summer. The investment is more than just about printing a few hundred copies of international titles.

CSQ general manager Dario

de Cian explains: “We started looking at digital presses about 18 months ago, looking to create opportunities for much more local advertising, customised covers for advertising maga-zines as well as for overseas newspapers.”

A key aspect of this was the ability to link the digital press to

the company’s Agfa workflow so direct pages for either digital or offset publication without having to intervene manually. The press also needed to print on the same 45gsm newsprint that the Wifags use and to the same standard to ensure adver-tiser satisfaction.

The company has an exten-sive Muller Martini mailroom and the concept is to take finished products from the digital press and Hunkeler finishing line and insert these into the normal nightly runs of the two regional dailies and so attract very local advertising that it would not otherwise gain.The same approach would allow weekly magazines to have highly reader specific covers, including some degree of personalisation.

The first products from the

press when it started printing in January were Russian titles, the Commandant daily paper and a weekly. Production of these is being handled through Johnsons Media Group, a print brokerage agency that is looking to work through a network of similar printers for publishers wanting to print on the ground rather than air freighting publications.

CSQ chose the smallest of the HP presses rather than the larger machines with the intention of buying more presses in future. Currently the T230 is located in the mailroom. It prints reel to reel and the reel is fed through a Hunkeler processing line to a Stahl folder. Future machines are planned for a space on the same level as the newspaper control rooms currently vacant and dubbed ‘The Discotheque’.

Plockmatic International buys Morgana systemsMorgana sysTeMs, one of the UK’s leading print equip-ment manufacturers has been acquired by Plockmatic Interna-tional, a Swedish manufacturer which is in turn part of larger engineering conglomerate.

Jan Marstorp, CEO of Plock-matic, will be in overall charge of the enlarged group.

Quen Baum stays on as managing director in Milton Keynes, but the move allows

major shareholders Andrew Webster and Paul Garratt to cash in on the business they founded after breaking away from Watkiss.

No value has been attached to the deal. In the year to Decem-ber 2011, Morgana reported sales of £14.4 million (down 22%), generating a pretax profit of £1.6 million (£1.9 million).

There should be a good fit between the two with little

overlap in product ranges. Morgana was quick to spot the need for creasing and special-ist offline equipment to handle digitally printed work, while Plockmatic has focused on inline systems for booklet-making, though also offline systems.

The Swedish company also has a range of inserting products which will benefit from Morga-na’s distribution network.

Andrew webster will retire from company he founded.

Name change symbolises change of direction for MPG PrintgroupMPg Books is transform-ing into MPG Printgroup to reflect a change from a mono book manufacturer into a multi-disciplined provider across academic, STM, education and trade market sectors.

The change comes as the company ceases volume book

production in Bodmin and closes its colour print site in Haverhill.

Ultra short run and print on demand book production will remain in Bodmin along with the administrative hub for finance, technical and client services. Otherwise the focus for book production is shifting

to the King’s Lynn site which operates a Kodak Prosper 1000 and Timson T-Press. Colour printing is centred on Bar Hill combining Printwise from Haverhill and the print-ing operation it acquired from Cambridge University Press last year. Twelve staff are moving to

the Cambridge plant, three chose to leave while a further three are made redundant. Currently this operates a KBA perfector.

The company calls the £12 million investment “significant” and says the change “provides the business with a clearer identity and strong brand reputation.”

Dario de Cian: “much more localised advertising.”

Exhibitions


ipex takes a digital stance to attract the creative communityIpex Is adoptIng the same sort of Digital First strat-egy that newspapers like the Guardian and Financial Times have promoted as the answer to declining interest in their litho printed products.

For Ipex the Damascene conversion comes following research commissioned from exhibition specialist AMR which showed that the major-ity of printers now offer digital printing and that digital printing is what visitors are interested in.

As the show organiser has failed to sign up any of the major litho press manufacturers, there is no penalty to adopting the report, which it has done through a White Paper explain-ing why Ipex is changing tack

just 14 months from the show’s opening.

The organisers are also cutting the duration of the event from eight days to six. But show director Trevor Crawford remains confident that Ipex will attract more visitors than in 2010 with the target above 50,000. Eighty percent of these will be traditional print busi-nesses, he says.

The change of focus will encompass the entire supply chain, he says, including those in advertising, marketing and publishing.

This creative community amounts to 400,000 people in London, providing a healthy target audience. It will be the same people that the Cross

Media show, launched last year, is aimed at. This drew around 2,000 to the Business Design Centre in Islington for the initial two-day event, 60% of whom were involved in marketing in some way.

Ipex plans a major confer-ence, running in the Platinum Suites above the main boulevard through the Excel centre, with sessions on each morning of the show. The aim is to attract speakers of the highest calibre. “The likes of Martin Sorrell is who we are thinking about,” says Crawford.

Other elements to the event will include an after hours Ipex City area using the restaurants and bars within the O2 complex, an applications showcase area

using the central boulevard between the north and south halls.

The aim now is to persuade suppliers that are heavily involved with digital printing and who have declared their intention to skip the show to reconsider the decision. This includes Xerox, HP and Kodak. “We now have the global market study which we didn’t have before,” says Crawford. “This has given us a real insight and temperature tester that we didn’t have before as to what’s going on in the industry.

“The last six or seven months have been a good lesson for us. It shows that things must change. Sometimes you have to change commercial direction.”

Large format printers likely to be attending Fespa have plans to invest an average €140,000 this year. The find-ings come in a survey carried by Infotrends on behalf of Fespa in the run up to the show in June.

The survey paints a picture of an industry sector which is positive both about wider busi-ness prospects and their own companies; where spending on consumables is anticipated to climb 15% this year and where buyers are increasingly looking for digital solutions.

Neil Felton, managing direc-tor of Fespa’s exhibitions business, says that the Fespa is “the major print show for 2013”, though conceding that China Print might have a claim. This view has driven the idea that Fespa is the “Destination for Print” with an aspirational theme driven by flying in a private jet. The airline theme will continue ahead of the

event with suitable luggage tags and ticketing and at the event in hostess uniforms and areas themed as the Print Inspiration Runway, the Jetset Conference and Pilots Briefing Zone and Promotional Products Business Academy.

The show takes place at the Excel centre in London, due to be the venue for Ipex a year

later, on 25-29 June. It has gained the support of Agfa, HP, EFI, Canon, Fujifilm and Durst.

“We want visitors to come with the idea of looking for destinations for their business,” says Felton. As the show is owned by the industry organi-sation it has a remit to educate businesses in the sector as much as to earn a surplus from

exhibitors and visitors. Already however, Fespa London is shaping up to be larger event than Fespa Munich three years ago. “The South Hall of Excel is entirely sold out and there are only a few spaces left in the North Hall,” says Felton. He is looking to attract 21,000 over the five days. This would be 10% higher than attended in Munich. At that event around half the visitors were from Germany and Fespa is expect-ing that ratio to continue. Most others would come from Europe with a smattering from the US, from the Middle East and Commonwealth nations. “We can gain more support from the commercial print sector that is looking to move into wide format printing,” he adds. “According to the survey we commissioned confidence in the sector is higher than at any time since 2007, before the crisis began.”

‘Aspirational’ Fespa is all but sold out at ExCel

Fespa managing director neil Felton says the show is a destination for print with an aspirational theme.

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InnovatIons & Investments


Xerox works with University of nottingham on managed printThe UniversiTy of Nottingham is rolling out a managed print solution which will cut 25% from its internal printing costs. External print arrangements are not affected – at least at this stage.

The university’s direc-tor of procurement Jim Reed is switching a proliferation of desktop single sided only printers for smarter, duplex-ing multifunction devices. The contract for the task was won by Xerox which is replacing 3,700 separate devices with 500 MFDs and just 200 desktop printers. The change fits a sustainabil-ity agenda, will save 25% on print costs and fits what Reed calls the new climate for higher education.

This, he explains, has been brought on by the introduc-tion of tuition fees which have replaced direct funding from government. As a result there is greater competition for students who are demanding a greater level of service. For Reed, who joined the university in 2011 from Rolls-Royce, this means implementation of standard procedures and an improvement in document quality.

He is overseeing an opera-tion which produces 80 million

A4 pages a year, most of which have been printed single sided and in colour. The immediate savings come from a switch to double sided print and having mono as the default. “We did the same thing at Rolls-Royce where the print volumes were coincidently almost exactly 80 million pages,” he says. “It was the same objective. We put the business case together: we would be green because print-ers are always on day and night and these would be replaced, black and white and double sided print would be the default and we would track every page printed.”

The project at Nottingham started with an audit across its 90 buildings to map where print-

ers were and what the needs of each department would be. This was a deliberately lengthy and detailed procedure, followed by drawing up of an in depth tender document. Print cham-pions across the university’s 60 departments were selected. The tender process, under EU regulations, resulted in a Xerox win in April last year. The implementation began in June last year. While it might have been ideal to replace all desktop printers, certain departments, with MRI scanners for example, still needed the smaller devices.

So far about one-third of the university has moved over to the new system. The process has been to run both in tandem, explaining the benefits of the new style of working and then removing the desktop units. The teams that have been involved have been a mix of university and Xerox staff, ensuring that all the drivers and software are in place

“We had to increase the func-tionality, we have restricted output to a single type of paper and deliver much higher quality of service,” Reed explains. Staff have access to print queues and can collect work at any of the print devices, which register the

transaction for allocating costs or tracing users. Activation is by swipe card.

If the job remains in the queue beyond a time limit, the equivalent of printing out but failing to collect the sheets, the job is wiped, resulting in a saving of unnecessary printed pages. “What we found at Rolls-Royce was that people will tend to reduce the amount that they find they need to print,” says Reed. “If it’s possible, they will read on screen.”

He does not under esti-mate the cultural challenge of persuading academics to change their behaviour, hence the controlled pace of the roll out, prepared by meetings to explain the process and benefits of the changes. “It means that you need to take a deployment slowly,” he explains. “We will not take printers away until the new system is fully working in each area. We started in the autumn and took the first print-ers away just before Christmas.

“At some point it will come together in a complete, managed service across the university,” he explains. That point is sched-uled for this summer. For Xerox there is a five-year contract valued at £9.2 million.

the red brick university has an up to the minute print network.

Panda PrinT in Dunfermline has turned to Heidelberg to replace a digital press, selecting a Linoprint C751 to run along-side its Heidelberg sheetfed presses.

Production director Mark Wilson says: “We run a number of Heidelberg litho machines and for us a real advantage will be that in the future we will be able to connect this machine to Prinect so prepress can allocate

work quickly and easily to the best machine for the job.” It will match digital and litho print.

That decision is based not on a fixed cut off, 1,000A4 sheets leads to digital and above to offset, but on a number of more complex criteria around mate-rial, availability, turnaround times and content.

The digital machine was delivered over the Christmas period to minimise disruption.

Morgana sysTeMs has supplied Camberley outfit Digital Print Zone with an Autofold Pro, AutoCreaser Pro 33 and Documaster Pro, which brings the company bang up to date in its finishing department.

The trend to shorter run lengths puts greater demand on finishing to be right first time and this led the company

to Morgana. Director Art Buckman says that buying British was a factor. “We like to Fly the Flag here at Digital Print Zone,” he says.

The Documaster Pro has had the greatest impact for its ability to produce stitched and squareback work, he comments. “We are winning work because we can produce such a quality finish.” he says.

Panda Print goes digital Digital Print Zone completes its finishing plans with morgana



www.bobst.com

MORE POWERBanniere.indd 1 25.01.2013 12:34:26

Fuji set on changing corrugated cases from flexo/litho to inkjetFujiFilm hopes to trans-form the corrugated case print sector from flexo and litho lamination to inkjet digital. It believes it has solved the prob-lems of presenting corrugated boards to the Onset S40i flatbed printers such that the board remains flat, no matter whether the material on the stack has a convex or concave bow.

This problem has prevented digital printing making serious inroads into corrugated display boards for free standing display units or for outer case packag-ing. Buyers have looked overseas to obtain the best prices. This will change, Fujifilm’s Euro-pean group marketing manager Tudor Morgan believes, if printers can offer production at higher speeds, at shorter lead times and in better quality than they can now achieve.

The problem is solved through an automated deliv-ery system in which a sheet of material is registered against three pins on a loading table. The sheet is picked up by a vacuum head which delivers the

now flat sheet to the bed of the Inca Onset. Here the vacuum table takes over in holding the sheet flat during printing. The addition of a mechanical height detector overcomes problems associated with the trigger sensi-tive laser beam detectors.

After printing in eight pass mode, a second head picks up the sheet using a matrix of suckers to overcome any marking concerns and drops it on a delivery stack, using push rods to release the printed sheet. The two heads work simultaneously, achieving a 20% increase in productiv-ity over current top operational speeds for flatbed printing.

But there are more barriers to wide spread adoption other than print speed. Fujifilm is tackling the consumable cost issue through development of a new ink set, UvijetOC. This is formulated specifically for corrugated boards – “it would be easily scratched off from a plastic film for example,” says Morgan.

Fujifilm’s optimism that it has the right tools for the sector is expressed in the £3 million

invested in new production for UV inkjet inks at its Broadstairs plant. This includes greater automation and the ability to produce ink in 4 tonne batches. The volume that this plant will be capable of will be needed as Fuji’s predictions show its inkjet ink volumes growing more than twice 2012 levels by 2017. Conversion of the corrugated board sector is key to this.

The ink can deliver a gloss finish by limiting exposure to UV light, so eliminating what is usually a further production step, says Morgan.

Early adopters are likely to be existing flexo printers needing the capacity to handle shorter print runs. “These printers are evaluating how flatbed inkjet will affect their business,” he says. “Our challenge is to under-stand the barriers that prevent customers investing now and in the future.”

Fujifilm describes five: productivity; the need to retain existing finishing equipment; the ability to match colour across output technologies;

delivery of a high gloss finish; and the ability to handle the gamut of corrugated boards without condition becoming a key factor.

With the handling system, the productivity boost to the Onset and the new ink, Morgan believes the pieces are in place. The ink has been tried and tested in the field. The handling system is in operation at the Broadstairs factory at the end of a two-year development project. It will go to a beta customer in March and will have the addition of a robot arm to unload and position sheets before the end of March. The official public launch will follow at Fespa in June.

The corrugated sector is also attracting the interest of Agfa, HP and Durst. Bobst is also developing a digital machine capable of printing on corru-gated boards. However, it will not be an easy sector to crack. Sun Chemicals developed the FastJet for the transit packag-ing market, again using Inca’s expertise, but has not progressed beyond the beta testing phase.

Roland dG is taking its LEC-540 printer/cutter to Packaging Innovations to share a stand with Esko and CGS. The aim is to show a workflow for proofing packaging where the Esko software creates the layouts, CGS handles the colour management and the Roland DG inkjet printer produces what the

company says is a contract level proof or prototype.

The Roland printer can print white and gloss inks to replicate varnish and embossed effects provides a relatively low cost way to generate proofs.

CGS has developed the Oris FlexPack Web solution based around its software and the

VersaCamm VS printer as an alternative to the legacy systems used in packaging which were either expensive and cumber-some or lightweight and not accurate enough.

Steve Chappell, packaging, proofing and industrial labelling business manager at Roland DG, says: “We believe wide format

print has an increasing role to play in the packaging sector and we are proud to be the printer manufacturer pioneering this change. We’ve had a brilliant response to the versatility of our LEC and VS series so far, and we look forward to introducing the benefits to a new audience in Birmingham.”

Roland DG teams up with esko and CGs at show



Delta Packaging adds fourth speedmaster with double coaterDelta Packaging is adding a fourth B1 press to its line up in Belfast. The new machine is a Speedmaster XL106-6LYYL double coater.

The company has added six positions even before the press arrives at the end of the month and as the increase in capac-ity rolls through the plant, will surely increase employment is finishing and other departments.

The three previous machines also have double coaters and six printing units. They are two CD102s and an XL105.

The double coating configu-ration enables a quick change from UV to aqueous coating and to handle low migration inks for food packaging. For this

reason the presses also run with minimal levels of IPA.

The investment follows three years after the XL105 instal-lation. That machine “has been hugely successful and it

has become the backbone of the company. We expect that and more from the 18,000sph XL106,” says litho print manager Connor Connolly. “In my opinion, and based on

research, the XL106 is the best press on the market in terms of living up to its potential in a live production environment.”

The same ink pumping system will feed the new machine while the extra demand this will create is being served by an extra ink kitchen provided by Sun Chemical.

The next step involving both ink company and press supplier is a drive to acquire ISO 12647-2 certification. This will be helped by the InlineControl onboard spectrophotometer that is part of the specification of the XL106.

It will also tie in to the company’s MIS for recording production data.

Litho print manager Connor Connolly says the XL106 is “the best press on the market in terms of its potential”.

DXG media replaces six-colour with five-plus-coaterDXg MeDia hopes to begin print testing its latest press, a five-colour plus coater Speed-master 102 which replaces an 11-year-old B1 press at the Manchester business. The machine currently being installed is a low mileage 2010 model that was sourced by Albion Machinery from Verona, Italy.

“It is replacing a 2001 six-colour machine,” says managing director Duarte Goncalves. “This is a lot more efficient than the old press and the coater lets us do fast turnaround work.” The company is itself 11 years old and has been handling an

increasing volume of work as competition in the Manchester area shrinks.

Goncalves attributes this to the level of service provided. “We are neither the cheapest, nor the most expensive,” he explains. “We are very firmly a commercial printer. Before making this investment we did a lot of soul searching, but it is the right time for us to make this investment, we feel.

“A lot of printers have been panicked into buying digital and large format and they can end up spreading themselves too thinly. We feel that if you are very good as a commercial litho printer

you should continue to offer it.”DXG last year upgraded its

digital offering from a Xerox 700 to a ColorPress 1000 with the fifth clear toner option. Now the business markets both litho and digital alongside each other,

selling print rather than the process. As a result and partly through the demise of other businesses in the area, DXG has continued to grow sales during the recession.

The new machine was previ-ously installed at a printer which ran short of work, consequently it has a low impression count, “not even run in” he says. It will run alongside the compa-ny’s CD74-5L. “This makes us one of the few printers in the Manchester area with both B2 and B1 sheetfed presses,” Goncalves says. “But the reason for our success is down to service.”

FriP Finishing, Hinckley, has installed its second Bobst BMA 126 foiler part of a strat-egy to ensure that the company remains at the forefront of deco-rative finishing. The £500,000 investment follows £250,000

spent on a Sakurai UV varnisher installed in October.

The large format foiler doubles the capacity in the 1,260 x 920mm format and joins a B1 format Bobst Foilmaster and increases group capacity to

seven machines. Managing director Leslie

Gibson says: “Over the past year we have seen significant new demand for our largest sheet size and this investment will provide us with greater flexibil-

ity in meeting the need of our customers.”

It now plans to expand to three shifts in its laminating and varnishing operation to three shifts as is already in place on foiling.

Frip Finishing installs second Bobst to stay ahead in decorative finishing

Duarte Goncalves: “We are firmly a commercial printer.”



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Friedheim shows off Cs-matic at the Finishing allianceFriedheim International has great expectations for the Audion CS-Matic 100 shrink wrapping machine it showed for the first time at the Finishing Alliance event at Duplo’s UK head office in Addlestone last month.

The £30,000 device is a conveyor fed shrink wrapper that can cope with single items or a stacked pile. The line can wrap 3,000 single items an hour, though this will depend on their format and whether fed on the long or short edge.

Friedheim is configuring the machine with a loading conveyor which would allow the unit to operate inline with a binding machine, say the Renz Mobi360 for example, with

items dropped on the conveyor proceeding through the film wrap unit which cover the product top and bottom and into the two-zone shrink tunnel.

The unit can cope with a product, or stack of products 200mm thick, says Friedheim’s national sales manager Stuart Bamford.

A collection spool collects the waste film, though this can be replaced by a vacuum extraction unit in high volume applica-tions, perhaps where the larger CS-200 unit is used.

Bamford says that the device offers a great of flexibility for a printer. As well as wrapping single items for protection, the shrink sealer might be used as a mailing line where the carrier

sheet and other inserts are added to the magazine or mail piece by hand before it reaches the film wrap unit.

For companies handling smaller volumes and cannot justify a specialist Sitma type line, there are possibilities he says.

“The 200 version has more sophisticated controls and can run at up to 6,000 packs an hour, so is a good match for the output speed of a perfect binder, perhaps for photobook applications,” he says.

Also on show at the event were a VPress web to print system in a web to finish configuration, Duplo’s range of finishing equipment and Renz with a Punch 500 and Mobi 360.

Friedheim also demonstrated a range of Baumann handling equipment suited to B2 format work around a Schneider guil-lotine. This included lift, jogger and pallet loading system. The appeal is more to inplant departments than to commercial printers.

stuart Bamford shows the wrapping of the Cs-matic.



First Komori Lithrone GLX goes to Chesapeake’s Limerick siteChesapeake is investing €4 million at its Limerick site, part of its pharmaceuticals and healthcare division. At the core of the investment is the first Komori Lithrone GLX 740RP carton press in Europe.

This machine offers reverse side printing on the first unit before printing the remain-ing six colours on the top of the sheet. A double-coater system completes the press specification.

The investment continues the roll out of presses across the Chesapeake group over the last couple of years which has also involved machines from KBA and Heidelberg, the first XL145 in the UK included.

The press for Ireland follows

on from the success of the Komori GLX40 six-colour press which was installed at its Leices-ter plant shortly after the press was introduced at Drupa last year. There are also six colour Komoris at plants in Belfast and Nottingham.

The key difference is the reverse print unit, which uniquely only Komori offers. Operations director at the Limerick site Morgan Fogarty says: “The reverse printing unit will enable us to provide our customers with the opportunity to print information such as user instructions on the inside of packaging – which is an increas-ing and welcome trend, as it reduces material requirements and ensures that vital instruc-

tions remain with the product.”Ahead of delivery of the

press, the site has taken delivery of a platesetter, image verifi-cation system and cutting and creasing platen, all shipped within the last three months.

Bobby O’Connor, divisional sales and account director, adds: “Further development at Limerick is very much on our agenda, as is investment across the whole of Ireland. This demonstrates our unri-valled commitment to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and medical device markets in Ireland.”

Part of the project will be to replicate the success of the Leicester installation where the press has a dual camera inline

quality inspection system, spot measurement devices and Komori’s spectral density control system for colour consistency.

It will strengthen Chesa-peake’s ability to offer global customers the opportunity to print in local and regional markets.

The specification with a twin coater and curing systems will provide the flexibiltity to offer a wide variety of finishes.

“An increasing design trend on OTC healthcare packaging to enhance shelf appeal is the use of varnish coatings. The double-coater on the new press will allow us to combine matt and gloss varnishes and metallic finishes,” says Morgan.

DiamonD print Services has installed a Kolbus KM600 binder at its Enfield factory, continuing the partnership between trade finisher and the German finishing equipment manufacturer.

The new binder includes a ZU832 gatherer and an HD143 trimmer, bringing the invest-

ment to short of £800,000. Director Neil Armitage says: “It is important for us to keep up with technology in the bindery.”

And praising the support received from Kolbus UK, he adds: “Being able to achieve the installation of this new line with a total spend of less than £800,000 was an added bonus.”

Proco chooses Horizon stitchLiner for variable dataproCo has turneD to IFS for a Horizon StitchLiner after winning a complex variable data project.

The Sheffield company is highly experienced in running variable data printing using its three HP Indigo presses as well as standard litho on its Roland 300 B2 machines, and has a line up of finishing equipment to match. However, the need to fold before stitching was an extra step in the process. Production manager Garry

Parrys: “With the increased volume and turnover within our digital production we recog-nised we needed a solution that would give a greater amount of capacity and flexibility in our stitching offering.

“The removal of extra finish-ing processes increases finishing efficiency. The main plus point is the labour saving on folding sections that would have been a separate process.”

The line has been fitted with camera verification to allow it

to handle variable content digi-tally printed work providing the company with the evidence that the job has been completed as specified. The ability to handle this was needed for a customer project and began the search for a suitable piece of equipment. This involved an indepth analy-sis of machinery on the market via trade shows and customer visits to understand the perfor-mance of the finishing line.

Operation of the 5,500 cph machine is through a touch

panel screen, but the real value has been through the elimina-tion the folding process because the StitchLiner is fed from flat four pages sheets. Says Parry: “We needed to have a piece of kit that could be both flexible to deal with small booklet runs of collated digital work but also be able to cope with the medium run length. It gives the company a greater offering in its ability to meet the changing demands of our client base as well as increas-ing efficiency.”

Diamond Print services installs Kolbus Km600 binder at enfield factory

Diamond directors Peter Wright, nick Dingwall and Roger Brent with the newly installed binder.

297x210+3Anapurna2050v7.indd 1 31/01/2013 16:05

Delga group


That’s enTerTainmenT

When both Blockbuster and HMV, two of the largest outlets for CDs and DVDs in the country, hit the skids in

the same week, it is easy to assume that this would be bad news for a company manufac-turing the packaging for those products.

Allan Wells, however, shows no sign of suffering sleepless nights, nor does partner Clive Gregory. Wells is managing director of Delga Press, Gregory of sister company Collector Set Printers. Together they are joint owners of the Delga Group, one of the leading companies for this type of packaging. The company dates back more than 50 years, and for much of that time has produced record sleeves, CD inlays and booklets and now boxed sets.

Wells and Gregory acquired the busi-ness through a management buyout in 2006. “It had been run as a lifestyle busi-ness without much investment,” says Wells. That was quickly put right. Every press has been replaced since then, the company has moved into B1 and there are now two traying machines, automating a task that had been a case of applying a dab of glue and attaching the CD carrier.

More iMportantly the new owners sought to diversify the business, working for film as well as music companies and looking for business outside that type of packag-ing. Gregory says: “When we bought the company we realised there was a need to diversify into other areas of print.” Most of that diversification has been led by Collec-tor Set which operates from two 10,000sq ft units at Aylesford. The main Delga plant is a few miles away on the Medway City Estate at Rochester where it has an impressive glass

fronted factory with 44,000sq ft for produc-tion and offices.

Where Delga Press obtains 70% of its £10 million turnover from the entertain-ment industry, CSP has built its reputation on work for the health service, producing the forms, the leaflets, posters and other items that help hospitals run smoothly. Three months’ worth of stock is held on racking which amounts to 15,000sq ft of storage. Items are picked, collated together and delivered directly to the hospital ward or department. It supplies 300 hospital trusts across the country.

Prices are constantly under pressure, says Gregory even though print is a very small percentage of health service expenditure. Nor are printed forms going to be replaced by digital data any time soon, as the digital systems will need paper back up for a long time. “When we are put under pressure,” explains Gregory, “our response is to have a look at the form to see whether we can change the material or change the colour.

There are still forms in use that use three-colour logos for example. This is slowly changing as joined up thinking comes in.”

CSP delivers sales of £6.5 million and Martin Paper Sales provides a further £3.5 million. The main site works 24/7 and employs 135 of the 200 staff in the group. Until Christmas there had been no need to set the intruder alarm for more than four months, says Wells, because the plant was in constant production. Security is taken seriously: doors need passes and the build-ing is further protected by security cameras at all angles, part of the requirement to be a member of Fact (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) which allows Delga to offer on site fulfilment to its entertainment industry customers.

As well as this certification, the company has the standard set of standards, with ISO 14001 prominent. It is also registered as a Sony Green Partner, a scheme which recog-nises environmental policies in procurement as well as in operation. This slots in with membership of Julie’s Bicycle, a company started in 2007 to bring together compa-nies across the UK music industry to firstly understand greenhouse gas emissions and then to reduce them. As a result Delga can apply the IG (Industry Green) logo to several of its standard packaging formats to mark out those that are lower in carbon emissions.

the host of certifications would be worthless without commitment to quality and service for its customers. The music industry has always been demanding. Files will be received on a Monday and the job has to be delivered by Wednesday Wells explains. In that time the files are flight checked, proofed and approved; plates

The entertainment packaging business is thriving in Kent.

no matter what hard format the album comes in,

Delga group has it covered.

Cover story


that’s entertainment

are made and delivered to press; the job is printed with perhaps an offline varnish applied; it is die cut, glued and creased and for Delga Pack products which have a plastic CD tray, this must also be applied. The packaging might also include a printed and stitched booklet and a cardboard sleeve brought together at completion. DVD prod-ucts will also undergo this four- or five-step operation within the same 72-hour turna-round. Production runs can start from 1,000 sheets, something that has been standard in music industry for decades.

In the days of 12in vInyl, the sleeves were mostly printed on four-colour Solnas with next to no automation. Today Delga has B1 and B2 presses with all the automa-tion needed at makeready to handle runs that are this short and up to and beyond the 400,000 units on the chart toppers.

However, the company has no plans to add digital printing to the litho line up, at least not at Rochester. Collector Set is differ-ent and there the group has two Indigo 7600s which were installed last summer. CSP also has reelfed presses to produce forms and labels needed by public sector bodies.

“We are a print management company that does its own production,” says Gregory.

the combInatIon of the differ-ent types of work has stood Delga in good stead and makes it difficult for any rival to offer quite as much. The offerings dovetail well. “Delga is a just in time print business,” says Wells. “CSP is printing for stock.” The public sector work is printed at either site, ironing out the troughs that can afflict the entertainment packaging work. Produc-tion spikes in the last part of the year and

in the run up to Christmas. The increasing percentage of special packaging, reissues as collectors’ sets, boxed sets and so on favours the gifting market Wells explains. And while downloads are taking a huge amount of music purchasing, the physical CD and even the 12 inch vinyl LP, which Delga contin-ues to produce, endure. “You cannot give your wife a download for Christmas,” says Wells. Nevertheless the market is very much smaller than it once was. Thirty years ago the music industry could sustain a number of specialist record sleeve printers. Now following the closure of St Ives Blackburn, there are just two in the UK. It is a very

changed market and Delga is determined to evolve with its customers. Says Wells: “Ten or 20 years ago an entertainment company didn’t want to see the public sector work we were doing. Today it is the opposite, they are happy because it’s an indication that you have a business that will survive.”

In those days all the printers involved in record business work would be dealing with the music companies and had no need to go out and sell their services. That too has changed and the company has a direct sales force of nine supported by teams of account executives.

Even if the golden age has passed and in the age of downloads music remains a substantial business. UK consumers bought 69.4 million CDs last year, compared to 30.5

Clive Gregory (left) and allan Wells are joint owners of the Delga Group after a management buyout in 2006.

Delga group


million downloads. Further around 10% of Delga’s product is exported to France, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

Despite the numbers and the massive sales that the top artists can achieve, Delga’s remains a business where short runs are more typical. When the blockbuster releases come around Delga works in harness with packag-ing printers elsewhere in the world, one of the reasons for its interest in colour manage-ment. The company is working towards ISO 12647-2, delivering greater consistency and quality using Bodoni’s PressSign software to monitor dotgain curves and working with Stehlin Hostag inks and consumables and its consultancy partner Trilogy to help the company achieve greater stability of process conditions on the Heidelbergs.

“It has meant that we pay more attention to the condition of blankets and rollers,” says Wells. There has been a notice-able benefit in improving makeready times and reducing waste at make ready he adds.

In general terms quality is significantly better than seven years ago, bringing Delga up to equal the best in carton packaging. The strategy has not been only about print quality, there is a great emphasis on inno-vation, working with clients to deliver the impact, the value and the presentation style needed. There are two CAD machines for creating the mock ups and estimating the ways to achieve the customer’s aims in the most effective way.

The company’s DelgaPack is a plastic tray mounted on a board which folds over to protect the disc and then slides inside a sleeve. It offers this for single, for double and

up to six tray versions, the latter holding 12 DVDs for a boxed set. The design offers greater scope for graphics and the one-tray version has less environmental impact than a standard plastic jewel case.

There is also a special pack that holds two CDs and two vinyl albums as well as other printed collateral produced for one of the UK’s leading bands, another where the pack includes a T-shirt rolled to display the image and inserted into a clear plastic pack. Another features a book, the facsimile of a diary that a musician had compiled includ-ing spot varnish effects to represent images stuck in with Sellotape. “I don’t think any other printer could have tackled that,” says Wells.

It has produced other perfect bound books, both as an extension of its entertainment customers and as part of the strategy of diversification that the company embarked on immediately following the buyout. There are rigid presentation boxes for new types of customer and a smattering of cartons for grooming products.

Delga is not about the lowest production costs, but Wells admits “we have to have very keen pricing when we look for new business. And I can completely understand those printers that price to fill their machines with print management work because they think

it’s better than having a machine standing idle. I can see the work coming full circle and that print management companies will find it quite tough to survive.

“We believe that people will pay a little extra if they know work is going to be right first time. We do produce very high quality products and could never claim to be the cheapest producer because we are selling the service and quality.”

the range of companIes that Delga is selling to is increasing. “When we did the buyout we had to produce a business plan,” Wells recalls. “We needed to move to B1 and we needed to diversify.” A five-colour plus coater CD102 came with the acquisition of local competitor CMCS in 2008 and was followed in time for its 50th anniversary in 2010 by a six-colour Speedmaster CD102.

The diversification effort culminated last May when Delga Group won a place on the Government Procurement Service for print alongside five other print and print management companies. The company now carries the GPS endorsement on its market-ing material and has used it to pitch for work from schools, local authorities, county constabularies and health authorities.

“I think we are the only one of the accred-ited businesses selling the benefits of the GPS system to universities and local author-ities,” says Gregory. “It’s better for us to push people towards GPS.” It has certainly been of significant benefit to the printer. “We used to have to compete with 40 or 50 printers for this type of work, now we are one of the six that can tender for work under the GPS. We receive all the contracts and tenders and can estimate and bid for

Delga press’s impressive facility overlooking the Medway in Kent is perfectly planned to accommodate the comprehensive array of machinery that operates 24/7. “It’s a game of capital investement,” says Wells.

Cover story


them. We have picked up work for a number of councils and others and are pitching for more substantial contracts.”

And the investment has continued. “When we bought the business we had only one stitching line, now we have five,” says Wells. Three are Duplo lines includ-ing a DBMi saddle stitching bookletmaker installed at Rochester last year.This has swallowed up the short run fast turnaround booklets that used to have to go through the Muller. It also has System 5000 bookletmak-ers at Collector Set and a Duplo UV coater. Further Duplo equipment is on its way. “We need to have two of everything,” says Wells, “because machines will break down and we cannot let customers down.”

Another AgfA plAtesetter, the Avalon N8-80XT, was installed last year again with the emphasis on producing the volume of plates needed to cope with short run work. The 6,500 plates used each month are the Azura TS chemistry free plate, in line with the company’s environmental criteria. This became its second B1 platesetter.

The two Indigo 7600s were the headline investment last year and have been installed in Aylesford. They are handling short run work and of course any that requires person-alisation. They are also printing carbonless stationery sets, collating the different papers from the separate paper bins on each press. The machines were delivered in the summer and bedded in during July and August. Since then each has been producing 2-2.5 million clicks a month.

Gregory says: “We do a lot of short run work for the NHS as well as via the GPS. We are not afraid to put anything through

them, including carbon less papers. Because of these we know we can print four-colour work at a later stage in the workflow.”

Alongside these machines the operation has more traditional form presses, an echo of Gregory’s introduction to the industry, operating an Autobobine collating form press running with plastic letterpress plates and printing in a stop start action. “It could take all weekend to print 20,000 sets,” he says.

Wells was one of the last entrants to the industry to be trained as a letterpress compositor. After a number of jobs he joined Delga as general manager in 1999. Both in short have worked their way up from the shop floor, at some time running all the machinery and carrying out every task in the business. The legacy of that is that the directors welcome suggestions from

the shop floor. “We encourage staff to have ideas. Out of ten suggestions one is normally very good,” says Wells.

The investments in 2013 include the intro-duction of a Tharstern MIS at Delga. This will be a comprehensive system controlling the whole of production as well as estimat-ing and stock control. Collector Set has a Shuttleworth System which is an integral part of the business there, updating on the fly as product is moved from the store to packs for delivery. “On average, something is moved out of stock every 30 seconds.” says Gregory. As the company maintains three months of collateral for NHS custom-ers, tracking this is a major effort and the Shuttleworth database is vast.

Delga is a confident business, no longer the under-invested operation that Gregory and Wells bought in 2006. They know they will have to continue to invest (“It’s a game of capital expenditure” says Wells) and, despite the troubles of the high street, they know that Delga is in a strong position. The former HMV group will be transformed into a new business selling music and films, though with fewer high street shops, and even Blockbuster may emerge from admin-istration in a new form. In its old guise there was almost no call for printed packaging; in a new form that may change.

like the peAks And troughs in demand that Delga copes with, the music industry swings between the extremes, but there will always be a demand for music that as consumers we own and control. Says Wells: “We will look at other revenue streams, but we will never turn our back on this market.” n

Allan Wells was one of the last entrants to the industry to be trained as a letterpress compositor.

Litho packaging


Far From conventional

pressesThere is no question that production

volumes for all kinds of packag-ing are becoming shorter. But, for now at least, the print run of one

for a carton is not needed. Retailers cannot control who enters their shop to the extent of decorating the outside of the box with a name and image personalised to that customer, nor even online is this sensible. Personalisation though has been done in high volumes, Absolut Vodka produced 2 million completely individual bottles last year and high value drinks, high value cosmetics and clothing may all warrant a degree of personalisation.

But for the majority of the packaging required, digital printing is not necessary. Shorter runs are definitely on the cards as major retailers fight for consumer atten-tion on the shelf where the consumer has to choose between one product and its neighbour. But this can be done through promotions, through design updates and by producing packaging in shorter batches, which is happening.

There is also The phenomenon of start up businesses who need to package their products for sale and do not want to tie up cash in bundles of boxes. The one is driving for supply chain efficiencies, the other for supply chain common sense.

Either way, shorter run production is coming. And litho press manufacturers and conventional finishing equipment suppliers are ready and able to stand their ground. In the last couple of years the carton sector has been the most enterprising in terms of investing in new machinery. It has had to. Much of the carton press stock in the country was a dozen years old, relatively slow to make ready and in production. This

is fine for long runs of similar work, but in the new market where the need is to switch jobs quickly, these older presses are hope-lessly inadequate.

Komori UK sales manager Steve Turner says: “There is no doubt we are seeing a trend towards shorter run lengths as the retail sector continues to be squeezed. The philosophy of Komori has always been to improve efficiency through automation and colour management systems, yet the latest generation of GL and GLX 40 presses go way beyond this and incorporate technolo-gies that not only enable the makeready process to be super quick, but crucially reduce the amount of waste substrate created during the makeready process and on the run.”

The waste reduction issue is crucial. The cartonboard can be 50% of the cost of a carton and waste levels that were acceptable when running longer jobs, become too high a proportion of the cost when run lengths come down. Hence, says Turner, the inter-est in makeready aids like the self learning KHS-AI and its ability to run through the washing and set up process for the next job automatically. A press is ready for the next

run in minutes, enabling litho to compete with digital in coping with shorter runs. “In our view, this technology keeps the litho process both economically and environ-mentally viable when producing very small numbers of cartons, and the quality will be every bit as good as the end customer has become used to. For example we see some of our customers routinely producing relatively small quantities of deluxe packaging that incorporate several special colours, metal-lic inks and high gloss coatings on their litho press.”

Komori is far from unique in feeling these pressures. There is great inter-est in the new Heidelberg Anicolor 75 and its application for short run, fast turnaround cartonboard production. In the same area Presstek has a number of customers using its 75DI for short run carton work. The demand is for short runs, not necessarily for digital printing. At present there remain concerns about the suitability of the consumables used in digital printing and their applica-tion in food packaging where low migration is absolutely essential. Aqueous inkjet inks pose a particular problem in this regard.

“nor do digiTal presses have the calliper that is needed for carton print-ing,” says Gary Wilkinson, sector specialist at Heidelberg UK. He points out too that digital can struggle to match the corporate colours that brands have become used to protect and promote their products. A large scale shift to digital will entail acceptance of some batch to batch colour variation and Pantone matches from four-colour process. “We work to a standard,” says Wilkinson, “This is a tremendous benefit. The Pantone Live system which sends the digital speci-

shorter runs are not confined to digital as a new breed of litho presses is

showing. the right investment choice

is vital.

litho packaging


fication of a colour directly to the press compensating for the press profile and the stock, really helps.”

Couple that with the sort of fast makeready, aided by inline colour control, inspection systems to pick out sub stand-ard printing and the ability to add inkjet heads to print barcodes or other identi-fiers on the press and the litho press will continue to present huge barriers for digital to overcome. “We have a customer with an XL145-6 with coater in France who is print-ing 70 million sheets a year with an average run of 25,000,” Wilkinson adds. On an Anicolor a printer with the ability to keep one chamber clear can print seven jobs in 45 minutes he adds. “Digital will have its place for jobs that are too short to be economic or where there is too much of a set up time.”

At DrupA lAst yeAr KBA threw down the gauntlet to its rivals with a demonstra-tion of its Rapida 145 changing not only plates and colour profiles in minutes but switching out the anilox coating rollers in that time. Presses to this configuration are already in use in the US, says KBA UK direc-tor of sheetfed sales Chris Scully. “There is no penalty for running larger formats any longer thanks to the controls and technology that enable these short makereadies.”

Shorter runs are essential he says, pointing to the example of rival cigarette manu-facturers. Malboro uses the same packs worldwide printing on gravure presses, while Lambert & Butler chooses to region-alise its packaging and brands, and needs shorter runs as a result. This are far from digital in run length, but fall to offset litho. The 18-unit press that KBA has installed at Amcor in Switzerland is designed to meet this demand, with coating and foiling inline.

“DigitAl hAs helpeD revitAlise the packaging market as it has shown brand managers what can be done. For printers too it has been a wake up call because the old equipment is no longer competitive. Carton producers have to consider digital produc-tion because they are professionals at what they do, unlike many commercial printers who do not have a keen focus on the end product. At the moment, however, digital is good in certain sectors such as mono books but not colour journals, for example.

“With a litho press, the customer can select the additional inline processes like flexo for varnishing for example, and all their finishing equipment is geared towards the litho formats,” Scully explains.

While there is a trickle of finishing equipment geared towards digital produc-

tion, conventional equipment with fast makeready is going to remain the order of the day. There is a danger too for compa-nies attracted by the potential of this sector in buying from suppliers that lack the back up and support. Bobst, for example, runs regular training days at its expanded facility in Redditch and has the sort of service team on the ground that befits its market leader position.

CrAig MorAn reCently took over as head of northern Europe. “Runs have been coming down for 20 years,” he says, “which has driven developments in fast makeready. We have been producing die cutters since 1939 and in those days the duration of a makeready did not matter. Now we have Quicklock, register systems to guarantee a tight register to print and we can complete a full makeready in 30 minutes or less.”

This applies to the carton gluer lines where the modular construction allows one element to be adjusted simultaneously with others. Ultra short run carton gluing remains a manual task, however. “There is a move towards just in time production and reduction of call off stocks held, though printers and clients should be aware that too many short runs will push unit costs up.

“Where commercial printers are think-ing of moving in this direction they should choose their business partner carefully because there is a learning curve to the process and they will need support.”

One way is to dip your toes through the support of a trade finishing house. One of the biggest is Carton Edge in Coventry where Neal Whipp is managing director. He is also chairman of the BPIF’s cartons special interest group.

AheAD of the pACKAging Solu-tions event in Birmingham at the end of the month, the BPIF has been conducting a survey to discover just what the demand for digital carton production is. “Digital has the potential to produce smaller quanti-ties very quickly and there is a great deal of excitement about shorter runs. But is it all about digital. Litho has made tremendous progress and can print quite small quantities in smaller formats effectively, for pharma for example. A carton printer really needs a Size III press, larger than the Indigo 30000 and then there is the question about the inks. But there is no doubt that there is a growing interest in shorter runs and from commer-cial printers, which is why Carton Edge has invested in the cutting and creasing market to enable commercial printers to take on carton printing.”

the Rapida 145 at Drupa (top) demonstrated fast makeready on the larger format. alexir (above and below) has reinvested completely to cope with shorter runs using komori presses and Bobst finishing. heidelberg’s Xl145 (bottom) has the makeready speeds of a B1 press.

Digital Packaging


When Moses led his people across the deserts to the promised land, he stopped and looked down on a land

flowing with milk and honey. Nobody knew exactly what was down there, nor how they would live, but all knew the opportunities were vast and that down there they might live happily ever after. Print equipment suppliers are in the same position looking down at the opportunities in carton print-ing, especially short run carton printing. The commercial print landscape is currently arid as that sector of the industry learns to cope with falling volumes and wafer thin margins, reducing investment levels and so on. Packaging, in contrast, cannot be substituted by a website and is growing in importance as brand owners use the box their product is presented in as a major marketing opportunity.

Add in A drive to control costs through ordering in smaller batches, the proliferation of different formats a product can come in for different demographic segments, new ranges of ready meals and so on. The net result is a flourishing ecosystem of exciting products that need packaging. No wonder the opportunities in packaging are exciting vendors and printers who see carton printing as a relief from the pressures of their existing over supplied market.

A whole range of digital press manufac-turers are also looking keenly at the sector, spotting opportunities to apply digital tech-nology. HP Indigo is close to market with the carton version of its B2 press; Landa has identified packaging as a key market for its nanographic technology; Bobst and Océ have spotted opportunities and have print-ing machines in development for different parts of the packaging sector.

To date the percentage of the market that has gone digital is minuscule. The reckoning

is that cartons could follow the same path as labels, where digital has made significant inroads, covering between 2-10% of the market depending on whether we consider the volume of substrates or the number of jobs handled. In short digital is an estab-lished process and can only increase share.

Some of these digital label printers are now eyeing the opportunities in carton printing, printing on reels of cartonboard rather than self adhesive label stock. This is not a new concept. Xeikon once showed a press running CD sleeves during a print exhibition, and the Stora Enso Gallop finishing technology is in place in Ireland

to handle work from a Xerox iGen. Xeikon also has a customer in the US using its press to print short run golf ball sleeves custom-ised to corporate golf days and branded with golf courses. The machine in Europe is being used to print short runs of cake boxes, printed with the name of the bakery on the outside.

in the UK MerciAn lAbels has led the way into digital carton production using the Xeikon presses that it has had for label printing. “We are new to cartons,” says managing director Dr Adrian Steele, “but we have been doing packaging for 34 years

and produce short run labels for SMEs across the UK.”

This provides both the experience in working with these smaller customers and in delivering to their expectations of

cost, quality and service. This means next day delivery. “We think our experience of digital labels will translate to digital cartons. At the moment, however, the market for digital cartons does not exist, though we are sure it will start to develop.”

The key to digital production is the removal of unnecessary steps. Traditional production is a three-stage process, says Steele, comprising print, cut and crease and then fold and glue. Mercian has eliminated one of these stages, moving from loaded cartonboard to print, varnish or laminate, cut and crease in a single inline pass. “It takes just two seconds from printing to the finished carton,” he says.

the MArKet is not for personal-ised products, but rather short run print on demand to reduce stock holding, manage cashflows and cut out waste caused by obso-lescence. “Customers can order multiples of different designs and different quantities in a single batch without a cost penalty. It means that they do not have to tie up working

Opportunity knOcks

Digital carton printing offers huge potential, say technology

providers, predicting that cartons will follow the labels

sector.

Xeikon users have been able to produce cartons on their web presses.

Digital Packaging


capital in stock,” he explains. “It means that they will order a certain mix of products one week and perhaps a different mix of quanti-ties the next week.”

The move to this type of working demands efficiencies in administration and workflow and in many cases a web to print ordering system. Steele comments: “Digital is a very different ball game, you need the culture and internal processes to manage it. We developed our own workflow and have a full time engineer to maintain and develop it.” Most of all though it is a change in mindset, just as those that have had most success with digital printing in commercial print applications have created a new culture around the possibilities of the technology.

The applicaTions begin To open up. There is sample testing, testing the effec-tiveness of one design against another, short run versions for smaller markets (perhaps home language version packaging for certain immigrant communities within a country), pharmaceutical packaging and high value short run packaging. It is the latter market that RCS is targeting with its Screen True-press JetSX sheetfed inkjet press installed at the end of last year. Managing director Mike

Todd envisages creating a number of stand-ard templates for boxes on a website which consumers can decorate with graphics, in a more sophisticated version of the personal-ised greetings card or business card market. Small batches of cartons can be ordered for special occasions like weddings or promo-tional events.

This overcomes the issue of finishing the printed box, one where the only digital options are as yet a flatbed plotter for cutting out boxes, say something from Esko or Zund or the Highcon Euclid. This combines laser cutting with a made on the cylinder replace-able creasing die, but is really intended for short batch production where setting up a Bobst or similar machine would be prohibi-tively expensive. AB Graphics is planning to apply its experience in web finishing in the labels sector to cartons, teaming up with German manufacturer Kama to offer a rapid turnaround flatbed solution. Kama’s platens at B3 and B2 format are very well suited to the short run sector, offering a very flat table which needs no extra packing to achieve the correct pressures and creasing heights across the sheet, so making cassette style make ready where dies are slotted into place in minutes a practical proposition.

Mark Nixon of Conversion UK, which is selling Highcon in the UK, explains the advantages: “Customers can cope with the occasional short run job on standard equip-ment, but when it comes to 10-20 of these jobs a week then it becomes awkward to work like this. So far packaging has got off lightly when it comes to competition from digital, but there is great interest in the likes of the HP Indigo 30000. Everybody is waiting for something to happen.

“We have been Talking about a customer’s client who runs a £1 million cosmetics business. There are 46 products and 38 styles of box and uncertain sales patterns. It makes no sense for that customer to order printed boxes to hold in stock,” he says.

Jacky Sidebottom, managing director of Glossop Cartons, invested in both litho and digital printing last year, one with a Mitsubi-shi 3000, the other with a Fuji Acuity 16000 UV LED flatbed. “I think digital is coming. Customers want less of their money tied up in stock, so it’s all about a question of timing. What is the right technology at the right time. And for us, we have to decide, do we want to be a pioneer, or do we follow?”

case stuDy Superfast Labelsa year ago suPerfast labels in Gillingham, Kent, became the first UK printer to install an Epson Surepress inkjet label press. It was not a shot in the dark. The company had been handling digital labels for some time, farming this work out to other digital label printers around the country. By the time the company took the plunge itself, it had enough work to account for 80% of capacity says Andrew Miller.

The company has plenty of experience in flexo printing labels, so substrates and customers were not a problem. “We now have a choice, do we go through the platemaking process and setting up colour for flexo printing, or do we press a button and print it digitally?” he says.

The Epson has proved a good choice for the business. There are other faster (and more expensive) digital presses, but as Superfast was aiming at short run batch production, around 40 metres is a good run, speed was not of the essence. “If we are printing a 40 metre run, that job is on press for only 20 minutes, we don’t need to print it in three minutes. If we do get a very long digital job, we can always put that out, just as other digital printers can ask us to take on jobs that are too short for comfort,” he explains.

A trip to Labelexpo 18 months ago convinced him that Epson was the way to go. “It has proved the right decision. In the first year we had just one hour of unplanned downtime,” he says.

Inkjet has also proved ideal in printing the colours needed. “It can print the strongest reds and then subtle colours immediately because there is no fear about ghosting. We have never had a customer query a colour,” Miller adds.

What the introduction of the digital press has done is start to alter the type of work the business handles. As well as its traditional client base, Miller says “We are getting a lot more local businesses coming to us. It’s a step back to 20 years ago when we would design every label. After that artwork went back to the studios and they produced the artwork files for us. Now we are working with local businesses, like farmhouse food producers, we are producing the design for them. It becomes easier for everyone.”

Internally the company has got to grips with how to get the best from the Epson. It runs largely unattended except at job changeover. A CCTV camera is trained on it to alert operators if there is a problem and says Miller Epson’s engineers in Japan have been known to log in to watch their development at work churning out labels. “We have become used to it,” he says. “For example we will schedule the longest job of the day over the lunch break, leaving the machine to run while we eat.”

digital packaging


BoBstBobst announced at Drupa that it is develop-ing a digital press for corrugated applications initially and showed early samples at the show. The chosen technology has not been announced, nor any timetable to bring the press to market. Likewise specifications and performance are not published.

FujiDisregarding the use of flatbed inkjet presses for digital printing, Fuji’s machine for digital carton printing is the JetPress 720F. This uses the same imaging technol-ogy as the commercial print version of the B2 press, but instead runs UV cured aqueous inks. It is also a flatbed machine rather than the more conventional impression cylinder arrangement.

Throughput is 3,000 B2 sheets per hour fed on the long edge which, like the Indigo 30000, opens the way to print the larger B1 sheet in future. Initial installations will take place this year.

HeidelBergHeidelberg is waiting to receive technology from Landa, it is working on high viscosity liquid toner technology and has a range of inkjet solutions for packaging thanks to its acquisition two years ago of CSAT. It is also adding inkjet heads to the delivery of litho presses to add barcode and similar data that can change frequently. CSAT has a sheetfed inkjet press under development, but nothing more has been heard of this. Heidelberg is clearly capable of participating in the move to digital, but is yet to show its hand.

HpThe HP Indigo 30000 is the carton printing version of the Indigo 10000 B2 press that is now operating in test sites. The carton press version is due to begin trials later this year. The technology is the mature liquid toner that Indigo has used to establish itself as offering the highest print quality of any sheetfed digital press. Indigo has already established that its technology can print

packaging, either for flexibles or labels, so has some market knowledge to build on.

landaOne of the most interesting developments is the nanographic press from Landa. It wowed crowds at Drupa and one of the first installations is expected to be at a carton plant. The technology is an offset inkjet where the special inks form an image on a blanket heated to drive off water and then transferred to the substrate. The resolu-tion has been increased to 1,200dpi to make it suitable for packaging work. This is still a product in development and while the timeline says that production is a year away, much work is still required.

oceThe subsidiary of Canon has shown the Infinistream on two occasions, once during Drupa and second at a dedicated event in September last year. It uses a high density liquid toner technology that is also being developed by Xeikon, Heidelberg and Miya-koshi, though Océ appears the only company to be considering packaging applications. The core design to these is a unit construc-tion press with a final drying tower.

Océ’s machine is no exception. It will be available in up to seven colours and will run at 120m/min on a 711mm wide web. This is equivalent to 14,400 B2 sheets or 7,200 B1 sheets an hour. Océ anticipates pilot instal-lations this year.

screenScreen’s Truepress JetSX has been posi-tioned as a press for short run packaging thanks to its flatbed sheet path which enables it to handle thicker stock. The first installa-tion is at RCS where the company intends to offer website visitors access to templates for carton design. These templates suit the dies that the company has so overcoming the issue of how to cut and crease a very short run carton. Speed is 1,800 sheets an hour because the press is fed short edge first and resolution meets the 1,200dpi minimum required for packaging.

sun cHemicalIts FastJet high speed sheetfed inkjet press designed for outer case printing has been sidelined since being unveiled ahead of Drupa 2008. The use of a vast array of Xaar print heads and resolution limited to 300dpi delivered a throughput of 100/min. Sun Chemical no longer mentions the product.

XeikonThis has the advantage of offering a stable mature technology that is already being used in carton printing applications. It uses electrophotography to print at 1,200 dpi, the resolution being the breakthrough that was needed to convince printers that digital could cope with the graphics and text that is needed for packaging. The machines for carton printing are the same as for labels printing, single sided presses at 330 and 500mm web width. Inline die cutting options as well as foiling and varnishing are available.

SummaryWatch out for others looking at this sector. Kodak for example has discussed the potential application of its Stream inkjet technology for packaging. It can also push Nexpress development in this direction. The company is certainly keen on packaging as its Flexcel flexo plate is one of the product lines that is considered core to Kodak’s future.

Xerox in contrast, while supporting iGen users producing cartons, is unlikely to devote large resources to carton produc-tion. It has shown carton production during exhibitions and has customers working with Stora Enso’s Gallop finishing line, but docu-ment production and management is where Xerox is aiming its efforts. Komori and KBA are working on inkjet technology with commercial applications in mind, at least for the present. If digital production of cartons becomes a major wave, expect these to focus development projects using inkjet to print cartons. Canon, Konica Minolta and Ricoh will point out that they can print cartons on their toner machines, but this is not going to be a major area for the foreseeable future.

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Finishing


Creasing is beComing a hot topic again as demands for efficiency, for a wider range of paper types and the gradual demise of established ways of working are forcing printers to change. This is particularly noticeable at Heidelberg because converted Platens have formed the mainstay of many printers creasing requirements.

And Heidelberg is responding. Not only has it signed the deal to sell the Craig Collins designed Guillo-Crease, an inexpensive but valuable add on to a Polar guillotine, but it has also recently held a seminar on the subject of creasing in conjunction with Sappi and Tech-ni-fold.

Creasing before folding results in a better sharper finish and reduces the risk of cracking and wrinkling. Creasing decreases the folding angle. Without it the folder has to make a 180° fold at a single turning point. Pre-creasing means the fold is actually making two 90° folds at two turning points.

In recent months Sappi has noticed a migration from SBS boards to standard graphic boards and from dedicated pre-creasing equipment to more rotary devices which it says will require closer cooperation for all technically.

Many jobs are high value – perhaps using UV inks, coatings and full colour – and a mistake at the folding stage is hugely expen-sive. The knowledge base in the design and print buying area is not uniform and printers and finishers have a role to play in ensuring they understand the risks involved in folding and the benefits that pre-creasing can bring.

Delegates at the Heidelberg seminar seemed surprised at the advice given that pre-creasing cross grain is better than along the grain. This is contrary to the advice that would be given if work was folded without being pre-creased and the logic is that it gives a more open structure to the crease.

The Tri-Creaser from Tech-ni-fold allows work to be pre-creased at up to 30,000 products an hour. It is fitted onto the exit shafts of the folder. The patented rubber

technology of the creasing ribs stretch the fibres in the material to enable the fold to be completed without cracking. It offers eight different settings in the female component and three choices of creasing ribs to cope with different thickness of stock. Once the correct rib is chosen for the stock weight it is simply matched with the corresponding dot coded female channel.

The hand fed guillo-Crease uses a similarly colour coded method. It uses a magnetised creasing block (the male section) to be attached to the clamp of the guillotine, pressing down into one of the colour coded matrix (the female section) bars. The system allows users to apply as many creases as they require and can be operated manually using the foot pedal or automatically by selecting the clamp without the cutting function.

Ian Trengrouse, finishing specialist at Heidelberg UK, says: “Heidelberg Platens were the mainstay for cutting and creas-ing but we have seen a migration to rotary creasing and we envisage this trend continu-

ing. Platens have to wear out sometime. “The advantage of the rotary creaser is its speed. The Tri-Creaser can keep pace with the output of the modern folder whereas the Platen operates at just 2,000cph. The only limitation is the thickness and rigidity of the stock. It would be hard to handle a 350gsm coated art board through the rollers of a folder but 80% of the work currently creased is very suited to the Tri-Creaser.

“It also means that the pallet can handle the creasing and then the folding without needing to move between machines. The Tri-Creaser can fit any of the Stahlfolder TH buckle and KH combination folders, all of which are JDF compatible so entirely future-proof.”

sTreamline Press in Leicester was an early adopter of the Tri-Creaser and it has migrated much of its work, particularly short extent sections but even 16pp sections and stocks of up to 350gsm, to this rotary solution.

“It’s a brilliant bit of kit, easy to fit and saves a lot of time on both makereadies and production over the Platen,” says Patrick Corcoran, shift supervisor at Streamline Press. “The Stahlfolder runs normally but this gives us an added option in terms of achieving the maximum quality required. We crease many more jobs on the folding machines with the Tri-Creaser than we did when just using metal creasing devices and the Platen. We also achieve much better quality final products for our customers. The Tri-Creaser also enables Streamline Press to fold and crease a higher percentage of the work in house than previously. This gives a cost effective solution to our custom-ers. We always err on the side of caution and this provides reassurance to both our customers and ourselves.”

Streamline took along some work to test on the smallest Tri-Creaser setting and identified that the only aspect that could be at fault was the paper choice. “Sappi were superb. They took on board our ideas and concerns and were very open, providing us with good advice,” says Corcoran.

Creasing comes to the top of the agenda

Craig Collins with the guillo-Crease which heidelberg is offering as an add-on to a Polar guillotine.

Supplier profile


The machines are lined up on a smooth, polished floor, a stand in front of each providing details of the machine and perhaps its customer. The bare metal parts shine and there is a car showroom feel about the setting. But instead of toothpaste smelling salesmen, there are only assembly workers putting the final touches to the die cutters, foil blockers and strippers being produced by Masterwork.

This is one of the most impressive facto-ries of any printing equipment maker in the work and it is in Tianjin, a couple of hours along the motorway from Beijing.

Any thoughts of Chinese equipment being second rate or poor imitations of machines made in Switzerland or Germany are blown away. This factory employs 700, produces at least a machine a day, and can look any facility anywhere full in the eye.

It is a new factory, built specifically for Masterwork and opened in 2009. Already there is another 60,000m2 building being erected alongside. This will be for folder gluers. Another plant is nearby. In the next year the approach to the factory with laid out garden and fountain will be finished. Inside there is already a museum which makes the point firmly that the Chinese gave the world paper and printing. A statue of Bi Sheng holding moveable type four centuries before Gutenberg makes the point.

The sTory conTinues to that of the business, how it began making small foilers for a Taiwan company then created its own, how it became a private company in 2007, floated on the stock exchange in 2011, and all the time developing its own foiling and cutting and stripping machines. On the walls are samples of tight register foiling and debossing on cigarette cartons, on collector cards, on drinks boxes and pharmaceutical cartons where braille is part of the pack. If the Chinese ever move to plain packaging for cigarettes Masterwork will have to do some nifty thinking, but as smoking is a major vice in the country, this is not very likely.

One customer has 115 of Masterwork’s machines and overall its machines process 95% of all cigarette cartons and sleeves sold in the country.

While a customer can buy a platen or a foiler, with choice between mechani-cal, pneumatic or optical registration, the unique aspect to the product line up is the Duo system, combining a foiler and die cutting platen in one device.

The sysTem is also used to produce a twin headed foiler. Blanking is also part of the system, so with automated logistics around the machines, each can run pretty well unsupervised once set up to go. These are not the fastest machines, running at 6,000 cph, but as multiple operations are combined, there can be a net time saving against separate machines which run twice as fast, let alone the cost advantage. In all there are 30 different product combinations possible on the sheetfed machines.

Masterwork also produces a flatbed die cutter and stamping unit for web fed production and has a line up of folder gluers, which it has only recently begun to export. There are also inspection machines which will spot any blemish in colour, in emboss-ing or cutting.

And because these are made in China there is a cost benefit against machines produced in Europe without any loss of quality. Export manager Shen makes the point that everything is produced in China, from the smallest screws upwards, deliv-ering a cumulative advantage which is part of the initial appeal of the machines. However, there is more than price leading to companies buying the machines on spec and to sites where there are multiple instal-lations. Leading French cosmetics carton print Autojon runs seven Masterwork machines; another company in Paris ordered one purely on its reputation and there are machines across Europe, including just one at a printer in Stuttgart.

Sales growth has been phenomenal, 70% last year and expected to be similar this year. Sales have reached $85 million, making this is the leading Chinese print machinery producer and one that is making machines that stand with the best that Europe, Japan or the US can muster.

The company is opening a North American showroom in Charlotte, close to the US tobacco lands, and has a European showroom in Wakefield, which carries £250,000 of spares and where the business is headed by Ken Farnworth. “We have just sold a machine to Beamglow which is typical of the high end customers we work with. We are seeing printers bring work back in house rather than go to trade finishing and see the advantages of having two production steps combined in one machine.”

There are already plans to add inkjet units to the cutter-foiling machines to print bar code or other limited variable data. There are fast makeready systems and the software is a match for anything produced anywhere else in the world. “We are at the forefront with the factory and the level of expertise in the business. We are ahead in thinking about robotics. Within the next five or six years everybody in Europe will have Masterwork equipment,” says Farnworth.

Masterwork MaSterclaSS

Masterwork has built a new factory at tianjin capable of a machine a day output.

China Print 2013


China’s printers are in trouble, all 100,000 of them. As in most coun-tries around the world there is overcapacity and not the demand to

sustain every print business from Hongkong to Beijing, from Guanddong to Shanghai. Too many are too small, too inefficient and too wasteful for the country that China aims to become and will come under pressure as the change in leadership of the vast country sets goals that these businesses cannot meet. Shawn Feng, assistant global marketing manager for Manroland Greater China, states simply: “It’s important for the good printers to rise and for the poor ones to be forced out.”

Only 2,439 printers are logged as having sales of more than 50 million RMB (£5 million). And these account for 50% of the industry’s sales.

On the Other hand the print-ing industry in China is developing fast. Depending on which forecast you follow (one which has the industry growing at GDP, or one where it grows faster) the industry in 2030 could be five times larger than it is today. And in 2011, print in China was already 180 times larger than in 1978. In that year industry sales reach 4.8 billion RMB (£480 million). In 2011 this had reached 867.7 billion RMB (£86.8 billion).

Even with that rate of growth the print market remains undeveloped to the sort of extent that has western machinery suppliers salivating. Imports of printing equipment into China reached $2.5 billion last year and amounted to 1,074 print units in the first 11 months of the year. Heidelberg presses are, of course, manufactured in China, so

the total of printing machines installed last year is mind boggling. On top of this China imports vast quantities of ink, plates, film and paper. Exports of printing equipment run at $1.4 billion.

More than 70% of printers are dedi-cated to packaging, leaving huge scope for magazines, for catalogues, for brochures and leaflets: the sorts of paraphernalia that is meat and drink to printers in Europe and the US. Paper consumption per head is around 75kg, less than half of the devel-oped economies where consumption topped out at more than 200kg, though is now in decline. As the middle class continues to expand, paper consumption is going to rise. Uncoated paper consumption is three times the level of coated paper, a marker for the potential as higher quality material looks to use the better quality paper.

Currently packaging accounts for 35% of output by value, followed by books at 18% and newspapers at 10%. This leaves commercial printing at just 3.6%. Exports account for 8% of the total output in 2011, growing just 2.9% over 2010 and predicted to increase by less than GDP in future years as the opportunity in the domestic market increases.

While China is on its way to becom-ing the world’s second largest advertising market, overtaking Japan, the market seems underdeveloped. Newspapers carry ads for business services and for high end cars and real estate property, but not for clothes or food. Magazines will advertise cosmetics and alcohol, but not sports clothing or white goods. Discretionary spending has not been an option for the Chinese population. But wages are rising as companies, not only printers, try to hang on to good staff.

Hoardings posters promote housing developments, industrial goods and Euro-pean, US car brands or perhaps films, but there is relatively little street clutter and this is in the capital city. In the provinces the market is untapped.

this will change. The leadership that took over at the 18th party congress last year has already set goals for the country, not least of which is to double the size of 2010’s GDP by 2020. It will boost the creative and cultural industries, pushing from print and publishing from a 1.5 trillion RMB a year sector to 3 trillion RMB in three years. Around half that revenue comes to print, though with the growth also of the coun-try’s IT infrastructure and increasing use of the internet, perhaps this ratio will shrink a

Chinese checkers

China is the world’s largest print market.

it is the fastest growing and has

more printers than elsewhere. But

China’s printers face similar challenges to those in europe and

north america.

international print


little. But it is still a vast driver for print. If the industry continues to track the growth in GDP, by 2030 print in China will be a 2.8 trillion RMB (£280 billion) industry; if the industry expands 3% faster than GDP, by 2030 the industry will be five times larger than it is today.

The only qualifier is the rapid growth of mobile and internet access. China has stepped directly into the mobile and social media age. The numbers are stagger-ing. There are 564 million internet users, growing by 4 million a month. There are 597 million Chinese users of social media sites and more than 1.1 billion mobile subscrip-tions, again growing at at stupendous rate. This user population will surely persuade some companies away from printed advertising.

The growTh is driven by an increasingly urban population, requiring newspapers, magazines and packaging. There is vast potential as the development drive turns towards economic development of Western China to match the coastal cities and capital. There remains a lot of opportu-nity for machinery suppliers.

There are other goals that will stimulate print. The government wants to move the country from an emphasis on producing in quantity to one where quality has the emphasis; where sustainable production is key and where automation and innovation have priorities.

The objective is to create a “Beautiful China”. This will also put pressure on those print businesses that are unable to change. Already there has been a 1.8% reduc-tion in the number of printers since 2010.

In response to the pressure to cut emis-sions, there is an agreement to cut the use of VOCs by 1.5% a year and last year the industry achieved a 500 million RMB saving in energy costs.

The government policies are having an impact on the 500 or so print equipment providers who must also shape up or face losing out. The largest domestic press manu-facturer is Beiren with a range of sheetfed presses, flexo, label and web presses as well as bookbinding and other ancillary equip-ment. Some of its models have a distinct reminder of five-cylinder Roland machines from 30 years ago or else Ryobis and Solnas of a similar vintage. The company reckons to have 70% share of the domestic market built up over 60 years in business, much of it without much competition.

the new international exhibition

Centre is a modern purpose built

facility close to the airport,

metro links and hotels. the

halls are pillar-free and air

conditioned. Smart signage,

walkways and facilities should

make this a pleasant place to

visit, even with 30,000 visitors

a day. if the show continues to

grow, it is a place that more of

us will be finding out about first

hand.

China Print 2013


However, attitudes are changing fast. Its newest machine, one that will be shown in a five-colour plus coater configuration at Print China, is a unit construction 105 format press capable of running at 16,500 sph. “It is our most automated press,” says Zhou Lannan. It is also a machine that the company has applied for patents to protect. In contrast it will also show a four-colour 106 at the same event, but this has a running speed of just 12,000sph. At present the Chinese market is dominated by four-colour presses, the future points towards five-colour machines.

The largesT supplier is Shang-hai Print and Packaging Machinery Group which covers Akiyama, Goss, Purlux and Yawa among others. Most of its factories are outside of China and it has taken some of the culture from these as well as engineering expertise. “We have learned about customer focus from Goss,” explains Guo Haixaing. director of marketing for SPPMG. It too is emphasising the number of patents it has registered through the work of its R&D department.

Others have set up plants in China, Heidel-berg has led the way, but is followed now by Komori and with KBA in discussions to form a partnership in the country. The Japa-nese digital press suppliers have some kind of manufacturing in the country because production costs remain attractively low.

Digital printing is growing in impor-tance. “Digital print shops can be found everywhere across the country,” says Yu Zhen, chairman of Chinese Machinery Industry Federation. This is supported by figures showing the Fuji-Xerox is the leading supplier of production digital equipment with Konica Minolta closing the gap. HP has more than 500 installations across the country making China its second largest market. As well as the Indigos and large format inkjet machines there are five T series web presses. All are dedicated to printing books says country manager Cathy Xu. This is a massive growth since 2005 and will culminate in HP’s vast stand at Print China in May where the company will have 20 products on show, including the B2 format Indigos launched at Drupa last year. HP is looking at the opportunities in short run packaging, she adds.

The lack of crediT card carry-ing consumers probably accounts for the lack of transactional demand for webfed digital printing, but this will change. There are reckoned to be 500-600 million middle class citizens in the country and posters for Mastercard do appear among the ads for

BMW, Volkswagen and Skoda. This is a massive potential for all kinds of consumer goods, and advertising to promote them.

In the meantime inkjet webfed printing is in operation for government documents, reports that require a security number and other labels and tags. This requirement has persuaded Founder, one of China’s largest technology companies (think HP) to back digital printing. “Chinese labour costs are rising and 78% of print runs are already below 5,000,” says Lu Weidong, assistant president of Founder Group. “There is a demand for high speed turnaround and to take orders via websites.”

The company has a print integration plat-form that automates the process of moving a file submitted via a website to produc-tion, used currently for books on demand applications.

“There is a need To inTegraTe with the internet using 2D barcodes and QR codes to link to websites, to access specific information for pharmaceutical packs for example. And in future we need to move into 3D printing,” Lu continues.

Founder was the company responsi-ble for developing a first PostScript Rip in the country and has continued that drive expanding into workflow, colour management, ink control applications and anti-counterfeiting software along the way. It is also a major provider to computer to plate customers.

This is where Cron has specialised. Its platesetters are exported to Europe, via Highwater CTP, but its strengths lie in China where the conversion to CTP continues. Of the 259 million square metres of plate used in 2011, just 170 million m2 was digital plate, leaving a third of print produced on film and plate.

and The qualiTy of The plaTes is improving, possibly thanks to investments by Agfa and Kodak in plate production in China. “Certain plates used to have limita-tions,” says Chen Lili, manager of Cron’s customer service centre. This location runs a guest house where printers stay during training.

The company’s emphasis now is looking beyond the plate imaging stage and into the workflow and process control. It has been building a portfolio of patents includ-ing some that apply to the use of a laser developed for the aerospace sector into graphic arts and in workflow applications. For the moment the company is the leading producer of platesetters in China.

The growth since 2005 has been rapid

China Print facts & figuresl China Print 2013 takes place

May 14-18

l New China International Exhibition Centre (close to the airport)

l 160,000 m2 of exhibition space, 60% than the 2009 show.

l HP has taken 4,000 m2, the entirety of one hall.

l Heidelberg has 3,600 m2.

l Muller Martini has booked 1,000m2

l KBA, Komori, Konica Minolta, Agfa, Kodak are significant exhibitors.

l Litho press companies account for 5% of exhibitors, but take 16% of the space.

l Inkjet accounts for 2% of exhibitors, but 1% of the space.

l The show will run alongside a number of discussion forums and the fourth China Print Awards.

l The first China Print was in 1984. It takes place every four years.

l In 1978, the Chinese print market was worth £480 million. Today it is worth £86.8 billion.

l Imports to China $2.5 billion. China exports $1.4 billion of print equipment.

l There are more than 800 manufacturers of print equipment in China.

l The last China Print in 2009 attracted 160,000 visitors from 108 countries and covered 100,000 m2.

international print


with a twentyfold increase in digital plate consumption since then. There were 1,000 platesetters sold in 2011 taking the total population to 5,500.

Given the total number of printers in China, and that those with platesetters are using two-thirds of the plates used, this is an indication of just how small the majority of printers are.

The industry currently employs 3.5 million, though this is falling swiftly as companies close or find it difficult to recruit new people. With just 2,500 printers with sales above £5 million, industry consolida-tion is happening rapidly.

The government has set challenging targets, not only to raise production but also to improve quality and environmental performance. To date there are only 160 companies with any kind of environmental certification. What is needed is education.

There will be secTions within Print China dedicated to the greening of the industry alongside others which focus on automation, digital and intelligent technologies.

Across the country there are more than 40 schools focusing on graphic arts training with suppliers also in on the act. Komori will provide training courses in factory manage-ment, in production management and sales

says Toshiyuki Tsugawa, head of sales in China.

It is much needed if significant numbers of printers are going to survive in the next few years. This is equally true if Chinese printers are to adopt industrial printing, where the opportunity lies with print for the electronics industry, 3D printing and so on. China seems just as intrigued by the possi-bilities as any printer in the west.

In 2013 the immediate opportunity lies with the changing internal market. Adver-tising needs to start to promote the goods and services that are meat and drink in other countries.

Many of China’s hoardings promote industrial businesses, supplying tubes and piping for example, not consumer goods. It is a step on from political posters. The are ads for property projects, either industrial or domestic and ads for cars, German in particular.

If this is the land that saved Heidelberg, it has also done considerable favours for BMW, Mercedes Benz and especially Volk-swagen. The sector is growing 7.7% a year, a relatively sedate rate. Closer to the ground electronic screens proliferate rather than poster sites, newspapers are not filled with supermarket advertising, holiday promo-tions or clothes.

If the engine of the print industry is

advertising, China lacks one of the drivers.But the country’s printers are invest-

ing and there is vast potential here in every sense. The upcoming China Print exhibition will demonstrate this with knobs on. If Ipex is struggling to fill the space it has available, China Print has struggled to find the space to meet demand. At Drupa last year, the show had filled the 106,000m2 of space at the national exhibition centre near the inter-national airport.

And demand has led the organiser to extend the show via temporary struc-tures twice since. When the show opens in May, more than 1,000 exhibitors will fill 160,000m2. And those exhibitors include every international company, including HP, including Heidelberg, KBA and Manroland, and including many of those 800 Chinese manufacturers.

ATTendAnce is expecTed to reach 180,000, most from China, but with a showing of what the translator called “industry tycoons” from elsewhere, partic-ularly from Asian countries. China Print wants to be an international exhibition, but language is probably too great a barrier this year. In future years, as China continues to become part of the world economic commu-nity more and more of those industry are going to be looking east. n

Heidelberg has expanded its factory at Qingpu from producing folders to less sophisticated presses.

Profile


NPS’s secret isService

Neil O’BOyle admits questions were asked when he decided that he should invest in a print business after selling his chain of mobile phone shops in 2011. But he begs to differ. Northern Print Solutions has the tag line “A different kind of printers” and it is a statement that the company has proved to have lived up to.

He had built up the phone business to become the top franchise for O2 through exceeding customer expectations from the moment they walked through the door. The approach is no different in printing.

“PeOPle iN PriNt make excuses with regard to the recession. To succeed you have to be a little different and make sure that the level of service you offer is beyond expec-tations. We have five or six large customers and they all say they have never experi-enced customer service like it from a print company before.”

The business operates from a converted and refurbished church hall in Kibbles-worth, a village close to Gateshead. O’Boyle went into print along with old friend Craig Daly who had been working for a larger print business in the area. The friends had discussed going into business together for a long time and here was the opportunity.

NPS began in a converted stable block around the printing power of a Xerox 700. This changed last year when the church hall in the village O’Boyle had grown up in came on the market “for a song”. Several months later and it was completely refurbished as a spacious new home for the print business and NPS moved in in August last year.

the sales aNd service approach had the business growing at around 10% month by month last year and it was clear that extra capacity was needed. That came with the purchase of a Presstek 34DI. This kicks in when print runs exceed 500 copies, offering the sort of consistent accurate colour printing that O’Boyle says larger unit construction presses he has seen struggle with.

By this point the company had a second Xerox engine and had invested in a comple-ment of finishing equipment, creaser, folder, guillotine, bookletmaker and laminator from Morgana, Duplo and Watkiss. “We found that if you leave responsibility for finishing to a third party you will be let down on a regular basis,” he says. “That investment would allow us to go to the next level.”

A regional growth fund grant helped fund the investment in the Presstek with the proviso that at least four jobs were created. One of these was the operator for the machine, previously working for electrical retailer Comet.

“We asked Presstek whether we needed an experienced DI operator and they told us ‘not necessarily’”, he adds. “We have only two staff with a press operating background, so are not prejudiced by any experience in the industry. Presstek provided a lot of support and training using people who had previously been press operators.”

Before then both O’Boyle and Craig Daly, now general manager of the business, had been to Drupa. Daly called on his 19 years of experience to understand what the young business needed. “We wanted to make sure that what we were investing in would deliver

what we wanted in terms of top class work. Its colour management, its quality and consistency ticked all the boxes for us.

“We like the idea that the press is working six minutes after sending the file to it, and Craig liked the automatic wash up between jobs.”

WheN the Press came iN, the company produced a portfolio book using the same image but printed on a range of paper types, to show how different weights and finishes would affect artwork. This was presented to customers who had been ordering digital print from the company and helped win them over to the extra process.

The real secret, however, remains the level of service that the company provides. “The service which a lot of printers provides is not what I would expect to receive as a customer. We want service to be consistent, to deliver ahead of the deadline. Customers don’t want to worry when a job is placed, and we won’t let a customer down or make excuses. We make sure that every piece of print that goes out is something that we would expect to receive ourselves.”

it meaNs BreakiNg the conven-tional rules. Over Christmas and the New Year, the business did not shut but carried on working throughout. “The New Year sales now start on Boxing Day,” O’Boyle says, “so retailers should not have to wait for print. We won a large contract when a customer called before Christmas because their usual printer had let them down. We printed 150,000 A5 cards for delivery at 7.30 the next morning by working through the night. And we have secured that business as a result.”

The addition of dedicated sales rep, an office manager and someone to handle design and artworking allows Daly to concentrate on the growth of the business.

And NPS is set to grow through this coming year at around the same rate. O’Boyle has moved from a mobile business to a print business. He believes in its future.

The Presstek 34Di kicks when a print run exceeds 500 copies.

PeoPle in Print

www.printbusinessmagazine.co.uk February 2013 33

St Bride’s institute opens its doors to reveal its hidden gems The TrusTees of The sT Bride’s Institute want to put their resource of library, workshops and meeting rooms on the map, to encourage greater use of the central London facility by the printing industry.

The institute, in the shadow of St Bride’s church at Ludgate Circus, was built in the nineteenth century as an educational and recreation facility for print workers from Fleet Street and Clerkenwell. It was endowed by the library from William Blades (of Blades, East & Blades, later McCorquo-date Security Print), which has formed the heart of a collection of books about the industry, including a Kelmscott Bible and Boethius from Chaucer.

But the great aim is to exploit the facilities for industry meetings and seminars. Print

Business, for example, stages round tables in one of the rooms, while the BPIF has also held management meetings on site. Rooms have been refurbished as part of the effort to bring the facilities up to date for the 21st century.

There are also workshops in letterpress

and woodblock carving and print and soon to be extended to include bookbinding. Samples of print and binding work will be displayed in one of the rooms that is still undergoing refurbishment.

The demand for boxwood for woodblock illustrations for the likes of the Illustrated London News, stripped Box Hill of its eponymous vegetation. At the height of this publication, an artist was dispatched to draw the opening of a public building in Edinburgh by Queen Victoria. The image was divided between a number of wood-peckers as the carvers were known sitting around an oil lamp on the overnight train to Kings Cross were able to deliver their work for printing ready for a sell out edition of the magazine the same day. Fast turnaround in print is not new.

l A ShAke uP At kBA uk has positioned the company’s sales and support operation for the immediate future. Leading the change is the promotion of Chris Scully

(left) from area sales manager in the south west to director of key accounts and now to executive sales director, sheetfed presses. This was a position left

vacant when Mark Nixon left the business in the first part of last year. KBA UK managing director Christian Knapp says that since Drupa “Chris has shown that he has the drive and ambition required to succeed at the highest level and I am delighted that he has agreed to take up this challenge.”

In the wake of this move, Andy Pang (left) becomes director of service for sheetfed presses, a role he had before setting up the company’s consumables

operation. One of the key objectives now is establishment of the support programme for printers wanting to achieve the ISO 12647-2 print standard according to the UKAS approved BPIF methodology. Stephanie Nicklin takes over in charge of the approved consumables team. Anthony Bennett joins the company as area sales manager for the midlands, north west and Wales.

l All Print SuPPlieS, a key supplier to the sign and display market, has named

Jon Thompson (left) as south west sales manager. He has a decade of experience in the sector and fills a gap for the expanding consumables supplier. Kevin Wallace, managing director of All Print Supplies, says: “We’ve

seen our customer base in south west England and south Wales grow significantly. As a result we’ve appointed a dedicated sales manager for this area. Jon is tasked with providing continued support across an area that has some great opportunities for us.” The appointment allows Dave Bates to concentrate of the south central region covering Bucks, Berks, Hants and Oxon.

l heidelBerg has formed a specialist VLF and postpress packaging division to manage sales of its XL145 and XL162 presses, platens and folder-gluers, and has named Stefan Hasenzahl (left) as its head. Hasenzahl had returned from China where he had set up

the manufacturer’s Qingpu site in summer

last year to an internal strategy role. The company has also recruited Jason Oliver to head the digital printing division, comprising all its Linoprint products, both internally developed inkjet machines and machines built by Ricoh. Oliver has wide experience in digital press sales including EFI, Versamark, and Jetrion.

l MAccleSfield Printer SPirAl colour has appointed James Willdig as sales

apprentice, the first of two trainees that the company plans to take on this year.While working towards NVQ Level 2 in sales Willdig will also attend Macclesfield College. Only once he has a grip on the industry will he be allowed to speak

directly to clients. Sales and marketing manager Jamie Brelsford says: “He needs to learn about the industry and to be aware of the different techniques, products and services we offer at Spiral. From that starting point, he will be better placed to advise clients on the kind of solutions they require going forward.” Brelsford will act as mentor and will be steering his charge towards cross-media selling. “This is the direction the industry has to take,” he explains.

Print Business holds its round tables around the round table in the Salisbury room at St Bride’s.

Strapline


l UpM iS cUtting 580,000 tonnes a year capacity by shutting machines and selling assets across Europe. Most of the capacity affected will be SC grades and the action is blamed on “dwindling demand for graphic paper in Europe”. The machines involved are PM3 at Rauma in Finland producing 245,000tpa of SC; PM4 at Ettringen in Germany with 175,000tpa of SC. It also plans to shut or sell the Docelles mill in France which produces 160,000tpa of uncoated woodfree papers. Any buyer for this mill would be allowed to continue producing this paper, but given the market situation, this is considered unlikely. The reduction in capacity is unlikely to have a significant market impact as the SC market in Europe has been suffering. This is being exasperated by the introduction of new grades by Holmen and Stora Enso to improve the quality of SC while other newsprint machines are being converted to produce SC style papers.

l antaliS iS Seeking entries to The Review 2012/13, its showcase of the best in print design across a range of categories from annual reports to direct mail and magazines. Included for the first time are categories for the use of creative papers and for a print piece where recycled paper has been specified.

The presentation evening will be at the Abbey Road Studios on June 20 with all entries recognised as a winner, runner up or highly commended will feature in The Review Book and online. Judging will be by a panel of eminent designers with the use of material, innovation and talent shown coming into consideration alongside the design itself.

l nigel Slater’S bestseller The Kitchen Diaries II required 303 tonnes of Arctic Paper’s Munken Polar for the 80,000 run first edition of the cookbook. The requirements of a cookbook in terms of low reflectance and excellent print quality led HarperCollins to the uncoated sheet. Adrian Sutcliffe, group production director and purchasing manager at HarperCollins,says that the publisher often uses Munken Polar. “Another consideration was the darker images and text contained throughout the book; Munken’s crisp white shade was ideally suited to contrast and complement these images.”

paperlinx emerges from reorganisationPaPerlinx is coming to the end of the next stage of the reorganisation programme announced in November with the consultation period over redundancies due for completion.

Now the focus is switching to rebuilding the business around single points of contact for customers who would previously have dealt separately with PaperCo (or its trading branches), with HSPG or with Robert Horne. The UK’s dominant paper merchant has named Andy Buxton as sales director for the commercial print sheet business and Mandy Gallego as sales operations director, looking after business across the entire branch network, regardless of trading name.

The idea will be that customers will have a streamlined approach to dealing with Paperlinx, that their contact will be able to price and handle paper from across the three trading entities instead of having to deal with separate people for each.

The move should end confusion over pricing strategy that may have occurred when three merchants were involved and will mean less duplication of back office functions. Paperlinx commercial director Ian Hunt says: “This will ensure that as a group we’re better placed to meet the needs of our customers, increase our reach and improve profitability. These two appointments are the first step in our strategy for growth which will see us offering customers a broader portfolio of products, a greater depth of stock and superior service levels.”

There is no announcement about arrangements for invoicing, whether Paperlinx becomes a single entity for payment which

could have an impact of credit terms for printers, but such a move will be under consideration.

The challenge will be to find growth in the commercial print sector where volumes have been shrinking faster than the merchant has been able to shed costs and where Paperlinx is already responsible for a 45% market share. Nevertheless Hunt is optimistic. “Commercial print is our business, we are the market leaders and our focus is firmly on growth. Our aim is to provide customers with an unparalleled portfolio of products and services and to cement our market leading position in this sector.”

In the next phase of reorganisation both new directors will build the managerial teams below them and then the account managers will be appointed to work with each customer to achieve the single point of contact that is the aim of the change.

“Printers will no longer have three reps calling on them. They will continue to get the papers they prefer, but from a single rep. This will improve customer service and help achieve consistent pricing across the portfolio,” says a spokesman.

iggesund’s invercote for digitaliggesund is supplying its Invercote Creato two side coated and Invercote G boards in sizes suitable for digital printing machines.

The move comes following experience in the US where the market for digitally printed cartons is greater than in Europe. But this is changing according to Rickard Österlindh, responsible for sales to the digital sector. “Our market surveys found that a majority of digital printing professionals regard Invercote as a top quality choice as soon as they require higher grammages and thereby also a thicker substrate. It’s only logical

that we should adapt our service to suit this rapidly growing market.” The boards are available as 220, 260 and 330gsm. The lowest grade will be available as 450 x 320mm while the other weights come as 460 x 320mm.

Iggesund has been successful with this approach in the US and Österlindh believes that with development of new finishing technologies coming to market, this will spur demand for digitally printed packaging.

HP has recognised the material, making Iggesund a preferred media partner for the Indigo.

paper newS

andy Buxton and Mandy gallego will look after the whole branch network.


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