DuPont Cyrel DigiFlow plate processor at Sonoco Trident
The art of pre-press is so much more than simply making a printing plate, and in flexo, the repro house plays a vital role in getting artwork onto labels and packaging without compromise. Neel Madsen asked a handful of providers to present themselves.
Reprographics turn a designer’s idea into real live printed packaging through a long chain of processes. In today’s market, demands faster turnaround, just-in-time delivery of high quality packaging and sustainability mean that repro houses have be at the forefront of technology and invest heavily in the latest products.
Global capacity
Headquartered in Hull, Trident was founded by David Keel, who launched the business 22 years ago with just five staff. It is today a division of Sonoco Ltd, a US-based Fortune 500 global packaging company with sales of $4.5 billion, and the number of employees has grown to more than 600. In 2013, it acquired Mansfield-based Imagelinx for more than £2.1 million, which brought an extra 100 staff to the team.
Through its integrated brand artwork and workflow management system, known as Zen, which has over 10,000 users worldwide, Sonoco Trident offers complete artwork and colour management, sample mock ups, print services and much more. It is a trusted partner of many of the world’s biggest brand owners, and clients include P&G (a strategic partner for more than 20 years), Unilever, L’Oreal, Coca-Cola, Reckitt Benckiser, McDonald’s and Diageo.
The company produces flexo plates in the UK and USA, focusing on HD Flexo for the corrugated markets particularly high quality RRP (retail ready packaging). To help Trident achieve the best results in the market, it has developed a dedicated workflow based around DuPont’s DigiCorr with Esko’s CDI with 4000 dpi optics with a special HD dot shape and screening algorithm for flat dot plates, allowing the production of the highest quality flexo plates.
‘Our operations in 22 locations worldwide are fully integrated, meaning we are the only manager of digital brand assets to offer truly global capability. We build strategic, long term innovation partnerships with our customers, enabling them to protect the security, purity and integrity of their market leading brands,’ said Paul Bates, who was recently appointed European sales director. He continued, ‘In terms of flexographic printing, the next big thing for our customers is the move to fixed palette printing enabled by the increased colour gamut from Trident’s HD Flexo plates.’
Expanding customer base
Originally formed by the merger of two existing flexo pre-press businesses, LJ Horwell and The Grout Engraving Co (which dated back to 1901), HG Digital Graphics was bought by the present management team in 2005. The Dartford-based company now employs eight members of staff and offers high quality digital origination, proofing and platemaking for the printing and packaging industry. It also supplies a wide range of consumable products to the flexo print industry.
Since its foundation, HG Digital has executed a controlled programme of investment in technology, workflow systems and people that has seen turnover triple. During this time, the company has noticed a market place shift from predominately independent corrugated to small to medium privately owned narrow web label and specialist packaging printers.
Technology in use in its studio and flexographic plate production department include Esko Studio and ArtPro software, Automation Engine, HD Flexo, Esko 4835 CDI Optics 40 hi-res 4000 dpi plate imaging and DuPont Cyrel 1000P plate processor with DigiFlow flat top dot exposure capability.
Managing director, Steve Varrow, said, ‘Our growth over recent years has been through our strength in servicing and technically supporting an increasing number of small to medium sized label and packaging printing companies that have approached us asking the question of how they can take cost out of their business and enhance their print quality.
‘As a business we have listened to their requirements and implemented an extensive programme of technology investments, which has allowed us to develop an expanding customer base in the label and flexible packaging print sector by demonstrating the high print quality and consistency that these systems can achieve.’
HG Digital’s philosophy of ‘growth’ through diversification of its service offering led to the company becoming a distributor of 3M’s range of cushion mount tape as part of its support package.
‘We have noted a trend of label printers investing in wider web pit stop changeover presses and HG Digital’s combined repro, HD plate and cushion mount tape service offering has allowed us to create bespoke commercial packages and solutions for this market place which we believe can lead to overall cost savings in procurement and a reduction in substrate and ink waste through quicker makeready and less press stops,’ explained Mr Varrow.
Feeling positive
Established in 2004, Creation Reprographics in Daventry describes its customers as ‘quality driven, innovative printers and brands that are looking to save costs and improve profitability within their supply chain.’ The £1.6 million turnover company has a staff of 16 and offers 24 hour reprographics and platemaking services in order to meet customer demands. It is currently in the process of investing in Esko WebCenter in order to be able to work seamlessly with its global customers.
Sustainability has always been high on the agenda at Creation and stringent planning procedures in the platemaking department means less waste is created. Furthermore, the company’s Asahi AWP plate processor is one of only a handful of plate processing systems in the UK that uses only water to washout the plate material.
Matt Francklow (right), owner of Creation Reprographics, studying a print sample with business development manager, Alan Coker
‘The economic downturn of recent years led to companies placing less of an emphasis on the environment, but we are now starting to notice a move back towards more environmentally friendly products and processes,’ said owner, Matt Francklow. ‘Our brand customers are over the moon that they can meet their strict CSR policies and our printer customers are happy as it produces such a high quality result with added OEE benefits.’
He continued, ‘We have recently employed two new graduates as we are feeling really positive about the flexo industry, but are conscious that as always it is important to adapt and bringing fresh new ideas and people into the business.’
Aiming for new markets
Due of the geographical reshuffle of flexo printing companies that has taken place in the past 20 years in Europe, where flexo printing and converting businesses have been moving from the traditional markets to be situated in the more cost efficient markets, such as the Baltic countries and eastern Europe, the pre-press market in Scandinavia has been through a transition, said Steen Madsen, CEO of Reproflex Scandinavia A/S. ‘It will always make sense to print and produce the packaging on the market where the end product is sold, and we as a pre-press and supplier based in northern Europe, are aiming to join the new and fast growing markets, with all the challenges it might give us.’
Established in November 1999, Reproflex Scandinavia has grown steadily and today employs 30 staff and has a turnover of almost €4 million. Situated in a modern industrial park in Kolding, in the western part of Denmark, the pre-press and platemaking company supplies customers and business partners across Europe, and further afield; exporting some 65% of total turnover. It moved to a new modern facility two years ago and has invested more than €1.3 million in new equipment and software over the past three years. This includes a Kodak Flexcel NX Wide system, the first EVO 5 Inline Processor in Europe from Vianord, GMG Remote Proofing at a customer site outside Europe, Smart Screen and Softone technologies, and last month, a new Esko Kongsberg cutting table.
The customer base is made up of brand owners, printers, designers and advertising agencies, and its plate department produces plates from DuPont, Flint, Kodak and MacDermid for all segments of the packaging market, including flexible packaging, labels, pre-print liners and post-print corrugated. The plate processing department is covered by humidity control to ensure optimal conditions for the staff and achieving the most reliable stability for the products. The output in 2015 is set to reach 12,000 square metres of photopolymer plates. Its design studio works closely with brands to achieve consistent colour management across multiple substrates using Esko WebCenter for fast and secure proofing. Its WebFlex database system gives customers online access to their jobs 24/7.
Mr Madsen said,’ Reproflex Scandinavia is the bridge between market leading international printers and their customers. We offer value based products to the customers via remote proofing, remote platemaking, 3D proofing, managing of printing profiles on many different substrates, and supplying data and printing plates of the highest standard, just in time. With the help of modern technology we can tackle any geographical challenges, and offer more than just printing plates to our customers. Today we are returning highly complex designs within a very short timeframe to customers situated all over Europe, and as far as the Middle East and the US.’
The company is well known for the predictability of designs printed in flexo. A well developed colour management system is the key to achieving this highly consistent printing standard on press, explained Mr Madsen, saying that Reproflex Scandinavia supports CMYK based solutions, with or without Pantones, in the image, or in the graphics.
The company first started to offer the seven colour process Opaltone solution to the market some 10 years ago, but found that the technology never became very popular with printers, mainly due to lack of process control in the pressroom. However, Mr Madsen, believes that with today’s technology, and improved ability to control the platemaking and printing processes, fixed palette printing can be a viable solution to cutting cost and minimising waste while still maintaining high print quality.
He said, ‘The difference is that today the market has printing plates and technology that can give the contrast and colour space, smooth vignettes and sharp pictures in high resolution, by using four or six colours. We believe there will be a market for these new seven colour process systems, but it will be limited, and only for the narrow web market. It will be a slow development as we still face a general lack of process control.’
Nordic expansion
Finnish repro specialist Marvaco has recently expanded its operations in Sweden with the acquisition of Flexopartner. The company was established in 1984, although its Swedish arm can trace its roots back to 1914 through what up until 2013 was trading as Linds Flexo. With 90 employees in total in the two countries spread over six sites and a turnover of €10.5 million, the group is the biggest pre-press and platemaking supplier in the Nordic countries.
The environmentally friendly design of Reproflex Scandinavia’s modern building is part of the green profile of the company
The customer base is made up of 80% printers and 20% brand owners, and the company services not only the labels, flexible packaging and corrugated flexo markets, but also dry-offset, screen and digital printing.
Marvaco has championed high definition flexo in the Nordic region. A regular on the awards circuit, the company works with 18 Full HD Flexo certified partners, and received the ‘Best of Show’ award at the FTA 2014 Excellency in Flexography Awards for its work produced using this technology. Managing director, Kai Lankinen, said, ‘The demand for high quality Full HD Flexo is growing rapidly amongst our customers. HD Flexo was already seen as the standard, but the difference in quality is remarkably better in Full HD Flexo. It produces strong and vivid colours together with the smooth vignettes fading to zero. This also makes job changes from gravure to flexo easy.’ He further said that the need for expanded colour gamut printing, in combination with shorter lead times, are the clearest trends that they are seeing in the market today, along with local sites close to customers and a high level of customer service resources.
To meet the demand for high quality, the company continues to invest in the latest technology and expanding resources. It currently has eight Esko CDIs in its stable, three of which are Full HD Flexo units, and several 3D modelling solutions along with a raft of Esko solutions, including WebCenter, ArtPro, Studio, DeskPack, PackEdge, Automation Engine and FlexRip. In the platemaking department, MacDermid’s LUX and DuPont Cyrel DigiFlow/DigiCorr are amongst its lines of platemaking equipment, while its latest installation is an EVO 5 BP automated plate production line from Vianord.
Mr Lankinen concluded, ‘We have acquired new production sites, hired more personnel and further increased the technical sales forces. New investments will focus on automation, customer cooperation and brand owner business service concepts.’
