Steve Whitham, DuPont, and Mark Vaus, V&W Graphics, closed the deal on the Cyrel DigiFlow 3000 ETL earlier this year
Repro houses and printers have long been trying to tackle the issue of flute shadows in corrugated post print, while in flexible packaging, being able to reduce spot colours and print with just the process inks is another challenge. Neel Madsen went to visit two repro houses that have both installed DuPont’s alternative workflow solutions, Cyrel DigiCorr and Cyrel DigiFlow.
Corrugated industry suppliers are only too aware of the need to deliver products that answers the demands from end users and brand owners for printed packaging that is of a high enough quality to go straight onto the shelves of the supermarket and catch the consumer’s eye.
Historically, the problem of flute shadows (fluting), also known as washboarding, has meant that flexo post print was not of a quality that could compete with litho. Most often this problem has been dealt with by printing a pre-print liner and then laminating it onto corrugated board, an option that is time consuming and costly.
In flexible packaging, converters already produce very high end flexo printing, and here the challenge is now to take out costs without compromising on the quality. This can be done by reducing the use of spot colours and avoid downtime caused by inks having to be changed and the press washed down.
Introduced in 2008, DuPont developed the Cyrel DigiCorr system to reduce fluting when printing with thick flexo plates on corrugated board and enable printers to post print with ease. This was followed in 2011 by Cyrel DigiFlow, another enhancement that allows full support of solid screening programmes in a standard digital workflow and enables flexo printers to achieve higher solid ink density on flexible packaging.
Alternative dots
By exposing digital photopolymer plates in an inert atmosphere, the dot profile is changed to make it more suitable for printing on corrugated board. Essentially, this is an exposure unit modification that produces more precisely defined dots with a flat top and broad shoulders that will reduce dot gain and improve the ink laydown considerably. These ‘hybrid dot structures’ are achieved by removing the oxygen in the chamber and for DigiCorr plates, flooding the plate with pure nitrogen.
When using DigiFlow, the method is slightly different in that precise amounts of oxygen and nitrogen are mixed to create the exposure atmosphere. This optimises solid screening while maintaining small and consistent highlight dots. In both cases, the plate is imaged first in a CDI where the chosen screening pattern is applied.
Both DigiCorr and DigiFlow have already gained considerable ground in the US where DigiCorr received the 2010 Technological Innovator of the Year award from the Flexographic Pre-Press Platemakers Association. Now the UK is following suit and FlexoTech went to visit two customers in Lincolnshire to hear what made them go down this road and to see the equipment in action.
Repro specialist
Established in 1978 by Mike Vickers and John White, V&W Graphics Ltd is one of the largest privately owned, independent repro companies in the UK. Today, four main shareholders run and control the business, which specialises 100% in flexo pre-press services, origination and platemaking at its 16,000 square foot premises in Alford, North Lincolnshire. Turnover is £4.2 million and the staff numbers 51, 10 of whom are based on site at clients’ premises around the UK.
Currently, the company works a two shift pattern, but plans to move to a 24 hour manufacturing operation later this year to keep up with demand in the market sectors it supplies, namely post print corrugated, pre-print liner, flexible packaging, and sacks and bags. It offers the market both liquid and solid photopolymer plates, the latter being all digital and all in large format.
The last 10 years have been spent successfully building up a strong and diverse customer base in all the company’s key markets, but with significant growth in the post print corrugated sector. Mr Vaus said, ‘We have worked very hard in building strong customer relationships in recent years. A great testimony to this is that over 70% of our business is contractual with an exceptional high rate of customer retention.’
Challenges in the market
When V&W Graphics first entered the corrugated market, Mr Vaus explained, most of the print/graphics was fairly limited, and the vast majority of flexo presses for corrugated were not of a high specification when compared to other flexo presses in the rest of the industry. In the last decade, however, this market has seen huge improvements in terms of quality and investment as well as core skills and disciplines. ‘Particularly in the last two to three years, the industry has moved up another gear to take post print quality to another level that can seriously challenge litho,’ he said.
Today, repro companies are facing two distinct challenges in this market. The first is to deal with the issue of substrates. Since around 2005, the packaging industry has been using increasingly lower grammage papers and changing flute profiles to save costs and meet the market demands. The impact that this has had on print quality, the structural strength of the box and the packing lines at the packers is quite substantial.
The second challenge is to provide repro for the high quality post print (HQPP) market, which up until now has been dominated by litho printing. Mr Vaus said, ‘As a supplier to the industry, we have to have products and technologies that fit both markets. The challenge was to find a solution that would meet both demands.’
Having evaluated various other systems, V&W decided to opt for DuPont’s Cyrel DigiCorr system and immediately started doing one colour trials, quickly progressing to multi colour and then to live jobs. The initial trials and tests were carried out on the corrugated side, and the company has now also progressed onto DigiFlow and the thin plate gauges where it will be focusing on the flexible packaging, pre-print and sacks and bags markets.
The company is having great success converting litho printed jobs to flexo, and while customers’ expectations need to be managed, there is no doubt that the high quality and significant cost savings is attracting many new enquiries.
Mr Vaus said, ‘We have been part of a team which has successfully converted one account, which sees 50,000 units printed per month, to flexo. Lots of enquiries are coming through the door to convert jobs and 95% of the time we can confidently say ‘yes’, whereas before we installed DigiCorr, it would have been a ‘no’ in at least 50% of the cases.’
Training is essential
V&W Graphics also provide value added support in the form of training to its client base, predominantly for sales staff and press operators. The company believes that there is a lack of understanding and knowledge in the industry, a lack of training. Mr Vaus explained, ‘We firmly believe that there is a knowledge gap, particularly in the corrugated sector that has traditionally focused on box manufacture rather than high end printing.’
The company runs tailor-made workshops where it educates both internal and external sales staff. The training is both practical and theory based, and gives sales staff a better understanding of the flexo process using the DigiCorr technology. This means that they can confidently talk to clients, end users and converters about the products and decide if the job can be converted to flexo.
Mr Vaus concluded, ‘We believe that this is the way forward for our industry in targeting alternative markets other than existing flexo lines and we see tremendous growth opportunities for those companies who are prepared to invest. The combination of DuPont’s technology, our pre-press skills and the training we provide simply ticks all the boxes.’
Richard Coward, managing director Rigid Group UK, said, ‘Recent developments accomplished by V&W Graphics through its investment in plate technology have enabled us to overcome issues with flute shadow that have traditionally put flexo at a disadvantage to litho.’
Paul Hammons, DuPont sales manager Central North (UK and Ireland), reinforced this position. He said, ‘The Cyrel DigiCorr technology and the creative way that V&W Graphics approaches and works with its customers offers a corrugated solution which is differentiated, innovative and which crucially delivers a significant reduction in fluting and gives smoother ink lay down whilst the use of lower quality board is increasing.’
Trail blazer
The opportunities to take out costs by reducing the number of colours down to CMYK plus white, prompted DuPont to develop Cyrel DigiFlow. The UK’s first adopter of both DigiCorr and DigiFlow was Waldo Limited.
Owned by Phil Walmsley, who started the company in 1984 with partner Jim Dows, Waldo employs 24 people and is situated in Louth, North Lincolnshire. In 2005, it went digital and today specialises in flexo platemaking for the high end flexible packaging, labels and corrugated print markets.
The repro house has always been at the forefront of technological developments in the flexo industry, notching up many ‘first’ installations in the UK. Waldo was involved in producing early test work with HD Flexo for Esko together with Reflex Labels Mansfield, and this year, was the first to complete the upgrade to Esko’s Pixel+ alongside new HD screens for DigiFlow.
Perfect fit
Having originally started out with its main business in the corrugated market, flexible packaging now makes up 60 to 65%, and it is in this area that Mr Walmsley sees the new DuPont technology making a big difference.
‘Having looked at other solutions, we were not interested in a lamination process. We have done our time working with analogue plates and the inherent problems of dust and hairs! DigiFlow fits with our established digital workflow and the exposure unit takes up less space than many other systems,’ he said.
Mr Walmsley first saw some print samples in the summer of 2011 and was impressed by the high quality. His interest piqued, he then encountered the system again at Labelexpo in September where it was officially launched by DuPont. This all coincided with a need to update its exposure frame, so in effect, putting in the DuPont solution would kill two birds with one stone. Following several more meetings, the decision was made to invest and the company began running trials earlier this year.
‘This does not affect our production speed at all,’ he said. ‘The plates are purged with the nitrogen mix during exposure and no additional process is needed. We invested in the technology for our flexible packaging and labels side more than anything, but as a result of that we are now also producing DigiCorr plates.’ The company is also planning to install a generator to facilitate the supply of nitrogen and not be reliant on bottled gas.
The simplicity of the operation as well as the short timeframe also attracted Mr Walmsley to the solution. Plates of any size can be processed so there is no wastage on photopolymer. For a small repro house, the footprint of equipment is a major issue, and where many other systems have more than one component, this consists of just the one exposure frame.
The company’s focus is firmly on producing high quality plates for its customers and the DigiFlow plates more than lives up to its high standards. Mr Walmsley explained that the key is the ink laydown and that Waldo has found that it can achieve excellent depth and strength of colours with this technology as well as fine definition. One customer even reported that he had had to knock back the inks on one job when using the plates.
‘By adopting and embracing a new platemaking technology, such as Cyrel DigiFlow, Waldo is able to manufacture bespoke plates that are specifically aimed at customers’ requirements rather than a standard plate offering,’ commented Paul Hammons. ‘The Alternative Dot Geometry that Waldo produces is already creating new market opportunities for the company as the improved colour gamut, smoother ink laydown and reduced graininess fulfils the customers’ desire for greater vibrancy in their jobs.’
Home grown MIS
In 2008, Waldo launched Artemis, a bespoke management information system. ‘We try to automate as many of the processes as we can and have developed our own MIS to deal with the workflow,’ said Mr Walmsley. The MIS can be accessed by customers and used for placing orders for plates online and approving jobs. Artwork files can also be uploaded.
Designed and developed by Waldo’s IT department and Rawcode computer consultancy, Artemis receives input from all departments and has replaced most paper systems. It has also significantly freed up staff time as it has cut down on phone calls and email traffic. Future plans include linking it to the Sage business software for accountancy and payroll.
The Artemis system is one example of how Waldo does business, by using its expertise in flexo platemaking, solving problems when they arise and finding the right tools for the job. Mr Walmsley concluded, ‘Essentially, we are a platemaking company and that is what we specialise in, not brand management. Our customers come to us, because we are what a trade shop used to be like, but with all the latest technology thrown in.’
A step forward
Both companies that have installed the technology agree that it is a tool which will take the flexo process a big step forward and solve many of the issues that the industry has been struggling with for years.
As Mr Vaus said, ‘Essentially, it doesn’t matter which specific flexo market you refer to, there are many benefits for all market sectors. This technology will only enhance the finished product for the client and create more opportunities for real growth for us all.’
Mr Walmsley concurred, ‘I think there is a big opportunity for flexo now to improve the quality and produce some fantastic work. It is a great industry to be in.’
