“Think out of the Box” – Heidelberg shows packaging solutions for the digitized future

On May 23 and 24, 2018, more than 250 visitors from Greater China as well as from Asia Pacific regions joined the Packaging Day at Heidelberg Print Media Center in Shanghai, China. Under the theme “Think out of the Box,” they were able to see for themselves the latest packaging solutions from Heidelberg, which is aimed to help them stand out from the market competition, and continuously grow a profitable business and sustainable development in the digital era.

Heidelberg offers solutions for consistent Packaging Workflow with complete end-to-end box production. All presentations and demos showed the visitors the complete process chain until the finished box. Also seamless integration of die cutting, inspection and folding carton gluing are all essential for an effective packaging production.

Packaging printing market is promising

There is huge potential in the packaging printing market. In the next five years, Asia Pacific region will come out at the top of the list in terms of market size and market growth rate of packaging printing.

In China, the overall market development potential remains promising in the coming years. Thanks to the process of urbanization and the expansion of middle class in China, continuous demands for packaging printing products will be driven forward.

“In fact, the packaging printing market in China is facing some challenges similar to those encountered in developed countries, e.g. increasing demands for spot color and special effects, higher demands for standardized production, diversified job orders with increasingly shorter run length and faster delivery time, higher requirements on flexibility and OEE (overall equipment effectiveness). It is time ‘to think out of the box,” explained Benny Huang, CEO of Heidelberg Greater China, in his opening speech.

Heidelberg provides suitable solutions to address the above issues. With the “Smart Print Shop” concept, print shops are able to use smart, intelligently networked production environments to achieve an outstanding performance. Thus the way is paved for navigated and autonomous printing, with efficient production and completing ever shorter job runs profitably, as well as much less manual interventions, lower error rate and lower waste.

Highlights of the Packaging Day

The foundation for “Smart Print Shop” concept is the Prinect workflow, which was presented on the event in the first place. Thanks to Prinect, the live demonstration machines and processes have become so intelligent that the upstream process all the way to the press has been fully networked and automated, which quite impressed the guests.

The Prinect Packaging Designer software was introduced to the guests in particular. Packaging print shops can benefit from its extensive library with more than 1,800 scalable designs and components, which enable them to draft folding cartons and create the corresponding layouts in a very simple way.

The Speedmaster CD 102-7+L and Speedmaster CX 75-4 played a key role during the live demonstrations, which attracted many visitors’ attention.

The “Thank you box” was the central theme and its production was shown from the intro presentation until the finished box as a customer gift. This box printed on CD 102-7+L showcased the Heidelberg Multicolor solution, which is the color substitution to Pantone as well as enlargement of color space. Using Multicolor solution print shops could benefit from reduction of washing and make-ready times and enormous potential for material savings. The box was finished with Masterwork Postpress Solutions, die cutting with Easymatrix 106 CS, inspection with Diana Eye and folding carton gluing with Diana Easy.

Another demo job of CD 102-7+L was a cosmetics box. The most challenging applications on this job was the opaque white on silver board, and the Prinect Image Control 3 was the perfect solution here. With the Image Control 3 quality and color measuring system, print shops are able to measure and control opaque white using a completely standard quality control strip for the first time. Press operators can now save and access the target color values more easily and Prinect Image Control 3 ensures reliable control of day-to-day print production. In the meantime, DripOff varnishing application was processed in one pass. In a further step, additional embossing was done by a die cutter.

Speedmaster CX 75, the multitalent, entry-packaging-machine, also produced two jobs showing the customer benefit in packaging printing: quick and easy job change as well as user friendliness.

Lifecycle Solutions with the components Saphira consumables and services are an essential part of Heidelberg’s solution offering to customers for achieving top quality, productivity, and production reliability. The up-to-date Lifecycle Solutions were integrated in presentations of CD 102 Job 1 – CX 75 – CD 102 Job 2. After printing demo the Multicolor Job was directly reference to Lifecycle with Multicolor Kit from Saphira. At the same time, Heidelberg also celebrated the tenth anniversary of the “Saphira” brand. With Saphira, Heidelberg offers an extensive portfolio of high-quality consumables, both for everyday print jobs and special applications, as well as all production requirements for prepress, press and postpress.

Asian customers impressed by visit of MK Masterwork factory

Over 70 customers from Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines also took the chance to visit the factory of MK Masterwork in Tianjin, some two hours’ drive south-east of Beijing. They were impressed by the factory tour, the presentations of the Easymatrix 106 FC and Powermatrix 106 CSB and the company own graphic museum.