Some 150 representatives of the entire printing and packaging supply chain met on September 27 at Fisciano University, in Salerno, Italy, for the ‘Excellence in Packaging – trends and developments in the printing industry’ event.   

Held at the Engineering Department of the university, the industry event was opened by the mayor of Fisciano, Tommaso Amabile, and Mauro Maccauro, the president of Salerno Confindustria (the Italian manufacturers’ federation), who both emphasised the favourable moment the packaging, plastic and rubber industries are going through, compared with the difficult general market scenario.

Organised by BiesSse Tape Solutions, Bioplast and I&C, the event was sponsored by several companies in the flexographic and rotogravure supply chain, including Amcor, BST, Simec, Euroink, Rossini, Uteco and two pre-print service companies, Mavigrafica and Inciflex.

Professors Loredana Incarnato and Luciano Di Maio underlined the synergies between Salerno University, industry and research centres concerning packaging technology. The university has at its disposal efficient laboratory equipments for polymer research and plastic material development, with particular focus on eco-friendly solutions.

‘Companies in this market are facing the difficult challenge to differentiate into a high competitive scenario, excellence represents the only driver towards success. Today we have tried to explain how this is possible,’ said Bioplast owner, Gerardo Gambardella, referring to the flexographic market.

Inciflex and Mavigrafica illustrated how the improvements of flexo printing performances are deeply linked to high definition digital plate development. Today flexographic film can reach high precision level in terms of details and colours, which was previously only possible for rotogravure.

In the printing supply chain, excellence depends on waste cutting, automated printing machine setting (Uteco), CPP materials which are lighter and more transparent than PE (Amcor), eco-friendly anilox rollers using less glue (Simec Group), high resistance adhesive tapes with different compressibility for better performance on flexo machines (BiesSse), high definition rollers (Rossini), health-safe ink formulation (Euroink), control instruments which provide higher quality and allow costs reduction (I&C and BST).

 

Debate

At the end of the meeting, a round table discussion was moderated by Emilio Gerboni, graphic industry expert. Among the participants were Italo Vailati (Giflex), Sante Conselvan, (ATIF – Italian flexographic technical association), Andrea Di Stefano (Novamont), Enrico Mensitieri (Icimendue), Gerardo Gambardella (Bioplast), Sergio Lepore and Maria Rosaria Galdi (Fabio Mataluni). They were all optimistic about the future developments of the printing and packaging market worldwide.

Mr Mensitieri, representing the rotogravure industry and Mr Gambardella, from the flexographic world, agreed to consider that the two technologies are now on a par.

The challenge is to conquer new markets in Italy and abroad, with the best technology for every use, leveraging on southern Italian companies to produce excellent products and overcome the disadvantage of their peripheral geographic position in Europe.

The representative of Fabio Mataluni, packaging division of Oleifici Mataluni group, expalined how the attention toward market and research is their strong point. It has enabled the company to expand from a small traditional oil grinder concern near Benevento to one of the major agro-industrial companies in the world. As well as olive oil, the company produces bottles, labels and cardboard packaging, manufacturing the entire end product internally.

 

Promoting excellence

Top end quality is the goal for many companies, not only through the acquisition of the best technologies, but also through internal organisation improvements. A leading firm in flexible packaging and biodegradable bags production, Bioplast has already done so by implementing internal information flow and optimising production. This process, together with strong innovation and constant improvement in product quality, contributed to the BRC global safety and quality certification, which was granted in February 2012.

‘Striving toward innovation’ is the company’s mission statement and among its customers are several well known companies in the food processing market, particularly dairy farms, food confectioners, pasta and coffee manufacturers.

To conclude the meeting, Bioplast invited all delegates on a tour of its factory to see its extrusion plants and printing machines. This includes a brand new 10 colours, coupling and cutting printer from Uteco.

‘We decided to join forces with Bioplast to organise a unique event in the south of Italy in order to bring together converting and print buyer companies to share their knowledge and find the right orientation in the present difficult market scenario,’ said BiesSse’s sales manager, Angela Conti, and I&C owner, Sante Conselvan.

From Fisciano comes a positive message: promote excellence to react to the present market crisis.