If you have a printing problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire a repro house. Michal Lodej looks at how reprographic companies can help printers out of sticky situations, beyond selling plates.
While referring to your repro house as the A-Team might seem like a stretch of the imagination, they do come with a particular set of skills, skills they have acquired over a long career. Most repro houses are happy to spend time and even money on tackling problems that arise on the press.
Solving these issues, simply helps them to understand flexo printing even deeper than before, and can be invaluable experience for developing the next big technological breakthrough.
Dave Jarvis, managing director of PrintQuest, believes that it is the repro houses that have tried to help solve issues in the printing industry that have not only survived, but have lead the industry’s continual improvement.
Mr Jarvis said, ‘Reprographics has always been revolutionary, that is to say; it has over decades consistently evolved in technicality, yet it has remained firmly based on the cornerstone of its skills. Flexo was declared as the future of print in packaging, but took its time to establish itself. Only over the last 10 years with the advent of new technologies and pioneers such as ourselves, it has come of age, surpassing in most cases rotogravure and offset lithographic printing in the packaging industry.
‘The role of the trade house is critical to this transformation. This step change morphed the repro house from a supplier of plates into a consultative service provider, with crucial input on everything from anilox rollers, doctor blades, inks, machines to good working practices.
‘Today the modern studio not only specifies colour separations and dot structures, it controls colour by nominating screen rulings and anilox selection, thus creating a mathematical pathway for excellence at the point of print delivery.
‘Colour removal and under colour removal in turn have led to FCP (Fixed colour printing) and extended colour gamut printing which we have been delivering to our clients/partners for years.’
Training is now an important part of what PrintQuest offers to its customers
Bigger picture
‘The industry seems to be so hung up on the price of a plate when it should be focused on service, new technologies and pioneering processes, better working practices, time saving and wastage of materials; all in all, efficiency.
‘Cost savings come from these key things, as a strategic partner to our clients we can support with this. In our opinion the skill level in the industry seems to be diminishing, with experienced staff retiring and the advances of new technologies and software. This in itself is no bad thing, but unless we continue to train operators and ancillary staff, we will and are having a knowledge gap, this is where we can help and support.
‘In short we now offer an all round service from training at the press side to lean management practices in production. The repro house is more relevant now than ever and so much more valuable thanks to the skills they retain and the science they deploy daily, to service their clients/partners,’ Mr Jarvis concluded.
In practice
Body confidence and healthy eating are essential parts of modern-day life. Time 4 Nutrition is one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of advanced mass gain products sold into fitness market. Its customers expect the best tasting products and Time 4 Nutrition’s flavour house in Italy is constantly creating new flavours that build on the product range and allows its customer base real choices when deciding on their body confidence plan.
When developing the initial brief, the business turned to Labelneeds in Cardiff to print and supply a new range of high impact labels.
Chris Maslen, managing director of Labelneeds, said, ‘We have invested half a million pounds in new technology to complement our ever growing customer base with efficient and ground breaking seamless labels. We are committed to offering our clients the best service without compromising on results.’
To ensure the printer and its client achieved these results; the company chose to work with 360 Reprographics, a Kodak Flexcel NX Certified company based in Bristol.
The design had to run across a range of packaging formats, the large format label would be displayed on the bulk containers, and importantly, Time 4 Nutrition wanted the design to reflect the high-quality ingredients and tasty flavours. This required a high colour impact to create strong on shelf and web presence to its consumers.
Dave Berry, sales director at Labelneeds, added, ‘We supply this large label format in a number of designs, so we are very aware that there is a lot of scrutiny on quality of manufacture and precise registration for print and supply to our customer.’
Both Dave Berry representing the client and Seamus Ivory managing director of 360 Reprographics developed the print plan in conjunction with Sean Daly, who is print manager at Labelneeds.
Mr Daly said, ‘We were very aware that the design had to deliver impact, so we worked with Seamus and his team to ensure our pre-press set up was at its optimum.’
The decision taken was to run a CMYK label with silver hot foil standout text as secondary print in-line with the press. The impact of the design was improved by backing the black with CMY ‘shiners’ to create a strong black background and 360 Reprographics recommended Kodak Flexcel NX using Advanced patterning to improve both ink laydown and
ink densities.
Mr Ivory, explained, ‘At 360 Reprographics we continuously review our quality process and include our customers directly in the evaluation of our output. Our investment programme in latest technology processes and equipment maintains our commitment to our customer base and delivers the best quality out there that they demand and expect. Kodak Flexcel NX plate technology in conjunction with GMG proofing and Open Colour ensures we stay ahead of our competitors.’
Keeping online
The market is changing, challenging all those in the packaging supply chain to increase automation, be eco-friendlier, speed-up production and improve traceability and repeatability, and of course everyone wants the prices to be lower. In order to meet these varied and potentially competing needs, reprographic houses must offer more than just plate manufacturing, taking a holistic approach and going above and beyond to not just understand customers’ needs but exceed expectations with specialist service and support.’
In parallel, the digital revolution also continues its relentless march forwards, not just in its traditional sense in printing but in terms of workflow and service value as well. As our day-to-day lives increasingly revolve around mobile devices, continuous connectivity becomes the norm. It is no wonder that customers expect this to extend in to every aspect of their project, from design and pre-press to print.
Mark McKee, managing director, JFM Plates, expanded on this point, ‘Three years ago, JFM Plates began its own revolution. Focused on drawing from our considerable knowledge baseof over 38 years, we’ve taken steps to optimise every aspect of our process implementation, offering our customer the very best plates and reprographics services, all delivered through a digital workflow. It’s about getting the basics right, laying the foundations to help our customers optimise efficiency.
We objectively observe and assess the clients’ needs and the processes they employ and then work with them to make improvements – whether that’s a case of fine tuning, or a complete service delivery overhaul.
‘Some of the greatest issues for printers are maintaining efficiency throughout the entire print service
and delivering consistent quality time and again for clients. We offer an end-to-end service, encompassing everything from design consultancy services – thanks to our team of expert art workers and designers – to platemaking and proofing, ensuring our customers are able to deliver their very best performance, on-time, every time.
Mr McKee concluded, ‘ethos has always been to work in partnership with our clients and be viewed as an extension of their business rather than simply another repro supplier. This has enabled us to really understand our clients’ businesses and the problems they can face daily, offering relevant consultancy services and helping them to streamline their processes with appropriate technology to ensure they thrive in the digital age.’ •
