FEATURE

Converters Finesse the Finish with the Best Solutions for Digital Packaging Package printers embrace the latest finishing solutions that complement the efficiency of digital presses.

igital packaging is looking better all the time mirror the high efficiency of their digital presses. as a revenue opportunity — and not just This is what Dan Niblo and Jeff Searson had in Dfor companies that specialize in packaging. mind when they launched The Packaging Lab as a When NAPCO Research recently put the question source of short-run, quick-turnaround flexible pack- to a group of about 300 businesses, most of aging in Brooklyn Park, Minn., in 2019. As packaging which are not packaging printers or converters, 83% distributors, they had grown frustrated with the high of respondents said they were producing tags, , minimum order requirements, and the eight-to-12- and various types of packaging on digital printing week turnarounds typical of conventional pouch equipment. production. With the exception of labels, which printers found By Patrick Henry, they could readily shift to narrow- digital presses, ‘Let’s See if We Can Fix It’ Senior Editor, NAPCO Media digital printing was slow to take off in the packaging They believed they could do better. Niblo, the compa- space. Today, the industry’s faith in digital technology ny’s CEO, says new patterns of demand were starting for package printing is solidly grounded. Printers are to emerge, with customers “begging” their suppliers also learning how to deliver the final finished product for small quantities of pouches they could get right with the same kind of confidence, using systems that away. “But, nothing was changing on the flexible

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By aligning digital printing with the finishing solutions best suited to it, converters are rewriting the norms and the rules of packaging.

pouch designs for a total of 65,000 immediate availability of pouches” units in a single shift. The company with quality that meets customers’ operates a pair of the devices, one for expectations and delivery that is gloss films, and one for matte. “The consistent with their speed-to- only easier machine in our plant to market objectives. St-Cyr adds that run is a tape dispenser,” Niblo says. low-waste, solvent-free thermal lamination is in line with the Nearing 50 Million company’s plan to make 90% of Pouches per Year its products sustainable, recyclable, At Rootree in Burlington, Ontario, and compostable — a goal Rootree the pairing of machinery is reversed. also works toward by developing There, one Pack Ready Lamination and manufacturing its own lines of system — the first to be installed in compostable film. North America — supports two HP Also relying on an HP Indigo Indigo 20000 presses (a platform the 20000 flexible packaging press — company was also the first in Canada and owning the first certified for to adopt). With this setup, Rootree special effects using the Color-Logic has the capacity to produce nearly metallic color system — is AccuFlex 50 million preformed pouches per Packaging in Greenville, N.C. Tom year, according to Philippe St-Cyr, O’Brien started the company last president and CEO. year after a long career as a copy- He says that the things Rootree shop operator and a trade printer. wanted in a lamination system, “After you print, you’ve got to and got with the kind of thermal protect the ink,” he says, noting that lamination that Pack Ready and in conventional flexography, the usual other processes provide, were a way to do this is to reverse-print packaging side. We said, ‘Let’s see if unified print-and-finish workflow; the film and laminate it. AccuFlex we can fix it.’ What if we could do “fast, repeatable quality, without a uses an alternative technology that this in 24 hours? What if we could lot of waste”; the ability to handle not only shields the printing but change the entire dynamic to a 24- a variety of flexible substrates and simplifies the packaging structure hour lead time?” finishes; and “zero cure time” that — with important advantages for They claim to have done it at The would make it possible, in theory, to sustainability. Packaging Lab with the help of an deliver finished product by the end HP Indigo 20000, a 30˝ digital web of the day. A Beam of Electrons press designed specifically for flexible The idea is to assure “the AccuFlex is one of only a small packaging materials. The next step At Rootree in — thermally laminating the printed Burlington, Ontario, film; heat-sealing and slitting it; a Pack Ready and forming it into adhesive-free, Lamination system recyclable pouches in one contin- — the first installed in North America uous process — takes place on the — supports two HP Karlville Pack Ready Lamination Indigo 20000 presses system, a solution that gives Niblo (a platform Rootree and Searson the nimbleness and was the first in Canada to adopt). From left, speed they insist on for finishing Soek Awalia, VP of digital packaging. packaging operations; The Karlville system, co-devel- Pia Simran, VP of oped with HP for the HP Indigo sales and business 20000, changes over from job to job development; and Philippe St-Cyr, so rapidly that once, according to president & CEO. Niblo, The Packaging Lab was able Courtesy of Rootree. to turn out 28 orders with 42 unique

Visit us at SGIA.org PRINTING United Journal March 2021 | 17 FEATURE

handful of sites to support an HP systems integrator; Custom Design capable of handling heavy fluted Indigo 20000 with a CatPak eBeam Applications, a flexo engineering grades. In Kent, Wash., The BoxMak- Finishing System, a curing line that company that supplied the device’s er has added digital to its corrugated prepares film for converting on sepa- frame, web guides, and unwind/ services by installing an HP Page- rate slitting and pouching equipment. rewind sections; and PCT Ebeam Wide C500 Press, a direct-to-board The process, O’Brien explains, permits and Integration, which provided the platform built to print in the high printing on the surface of the substrate e-beam exposure unit, power supply, volumes that the corrugated market and, in lieu of laminating, laying down and operator stations. requires. an e-beam-curable that does O’Brien says film cured on CatPak Supplementing the PageWide what the lamination does without the yields “a less dense, down-gauged C500 for smaller runs are a pair of need for an additional overlay of film. package” consisting of fewer layers flatbed presses for corrugated board: Instant curing with beams of than conventionally finished flexible an HP Scitex 15500 and an HP Scitex accelerated electrons resembles UV packaging. If compostable film is 17000. A fleet of automated CAD curing in that it works by rearranging being used, the process adds nothing tables cuts and finishes the printed chains of polymers in the material that might interfere with its ability to board without the expense of conven- In Greenville, N.C., AccuFlex uses being exposed. One advantage for break down at the end-of-life stage. tional diemaking. digital printing and e-beam-curable inks and The result is the kind of sustain- Justin Stacey, VP of e-commerce finishing systems is that unlike UV fluids, they don’t able packaging that O’Brien wants solutions at The BoxMaker and Fan- to produce short- contain photoinitiators: compounds AccuFlex to become known for. “Our tastapack.com, its Web-to-pack portal run, sustainable flexible packaging. that could migrate undesirably out finishing equipment is geared around for custom short runs, notes that all From left, Lee of UV-printed packaging substrates, that,” he says. it may take to get these computerized Duncan, Toreze raising concern in pharmaceutical finishing systems into production is to Jones, Tim Mages, and applications. Digital for Corrugated “scan a QR code on an order ticket.” and Katherine AccuFlex’s CatPak system was Digital printing came to corrugated This can turn hours of conven- O’Brien. Courtesy of AccuFlex. developed in a partnership among packaging with the advent of high- tional setup into seconds when the S-One Labels & Packaging, a graphic speed, large-format inkjet presses finishing workflow, like the printing,

18 | PRINTING United Journal March 2021 Visit us at SGIA.org is digital. Another plus, says Stacey, is the fact that CAD tables don’t With the exception of labels, which lose precision registration the way printers found they could readily shift conventional finishing equip- ment sometimes does in extended to narrow-web digital presses, digital production. printing was slow to take off in the packaging space. The BoxMaker will go to the next level of sophistication in finish- ing when it completes installation of a Highcon Euclid 5C digital creas- along with the digital presses they a “holy grail” the industry is still ing and cutting machine, designed support. But calling the finishing searching for. “We struggle with for B1- and B2-format corrugated “digital” just because the printing pouching now,” he admits, citing applications. This device, says Sta- was done that way can sometimes the difficulty of finding trained op- cey, matches the output of several be a bit ambiguous. erators as one of the main reasons. CAD tables combined, and will be As Stacey points out, it’s He says his wish list for a pouching used in tandem with them. perfectly acceptable to use conven- machine includes automatic self-ad- Another Highcon Euclid 5C, tional finishing equipment in digital justment to web widths and product along with a second PageWide applications as long as the volumes dimensions, eliminating mistakes C500 press, are to be installed at are sufficient to cover setup charges. that can lead to setup waste in short Tango Press in Springdale, Ark., an O’Brien similarly notes that the runs. all-digital corrugated producer The pouching machinery he uses for O’Brien’s advice to printers BoxMaker acquired last year. digitally printed, e-beam-cured film thinking of venturing into digitally would work equally well with film printed flexible packaging is to Conceptual Wiggle Room printed on a flexo press. consider partnering with a trade It’s clear that finishing systems for In fact, he sees true digital shop for the finishing. Stacey packaging have evolved in capability finishing for flexible packaging as reminds those planning to bring the

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Visit us at SGIA.org PRINTING United Journal March 2021 | 19 FEATURE

AccuFlex supports an HP Indigo 20000 digital packaging press with a CatPak eBeam Finishing System, a curing line that makes it possible to form pouches with fewer layers than conventionally finished flexible packaging. Courtesy of AccuFlex.

process in-house that the useful life of its small quantities didn’t conform to Only What Clients Want the investment will be different from the economics of mass production. At Rootree, short-run digital what they are used to in convention- But he and Searson, having no prior production underpins the strategy al production. Because of the pace direct experience as printers, were for promoting sustainable flexible of innovation, he says, “your time undaunted. packaging. horizon needs to be smaller on digital “We had no idea of what we “The shift to sustainability is finishing equipment.” couldn’t do,” Niblo says. “All we knew really driven by the small-to-medium By aligning digital printing with was what customers were asking for.” companies, especially in the health the finishing solutions best suited to He believes that The Packaging Lab and food sectors,” St-Cyr observes. it, converters are rewriting the norms has succeeded in changing the model “Making our sustainable offering and the rules of packaging. Niblo from minimum orders customers available to them enables us to give recalls being warned that short-run can’t afford to “one pouch, one them an incredible number of jobs us- flexible packaging was “an awful seg- impression, not 5,000 copies and a ing material selections that they want, ment of the market” to be in because bunch of tooling costs.” without having to commit to massive quantities of orders. “We did not want technology to Justin Stacey, VP interfere with our ability to create of e-commerce solutions at The on demand,” he says, adding that as BoxMaker, monitors a result of having chosen the right corrugated combination of digital printing and packaging forms finishing solutions, “we don’t have being printed by to deter clients away from what they the company’s HP PageWide currently want, which is high-qual- C500 press. The ity, sustainable products that can be automated CAD offered in the immediate sense.” Q tables that do the finishing are soon to be supplemented by Patrick Henry is a senior editor for a Highcon Euclid 5C NAPCO Media’s Printing & Packag- digital creasing and ing Group. He has covered the graphic cutting machine. communications industry since 1984 Courtesy of The and is the recipient of multiple awards BoxMaker. for industry education and service.

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