Mark Andy and MPS bring hybrid digital to the fore at LMAI
There’s a clamour for high-quality printing of packaged products and labels. Top this with reduced print runs and increased SKUs and the pressure to deliver is clearly on the label manufacturers.
25 Jul 2015 | 2808 Views | By PrintWeek India
How does one do it?
Mike Russell, international sales director at Mark Andy, in his presentation on - Modern solutions for label printing, said, the factors that will enable producing right labels is a plant force and training programmes. “The modern press is hungry for more jobs because there have been improvements overall, including plates, anilox rolls, inks and software. It's also important to maintain your plant,” he said.
Russell said, gone are the days of longer changeover times, wastages, inconsistent print quality and long training curve. “The set-up time has come down to 60% and waste by 50%,” he said.
What has changed with flexo? Russell listed a some like - eliminations of multiple adjustments, the automatic position of print heads, repeat jobs can be handled more quickly, pre-registration systems now use servo technology and ultra short web paths. “This has helped inline monitoring, reduced labour cost, material cost and ink cost."
But flexo plates still has the biggest impact on short-run costs. What can be done to reduce the plate cost?
The answer can be found in hybrid digital solution, said Russell. The hybrid presses mix digital and traditional flexo/analogue and other inline processes, utilises the platforms for web transport, tension control, and software and systems integration among other things. “These production level digital solutions are designed to run high-quality jobs with speed, even producing the most demanding jobs with complete confidence,” said Russell.
John Beltman, senior project manager for MPS Systems, in his presentation, explained how lowest cost per 1000 labels can be achieved with advanced technologies.
It’s a fact that there are packaging challenges, and these come from increased demand for shelf impact and brand integrity, short-runs and increased versioning, reduced time to market, and raw material cost among others.
Beltman said, all you have to do is save 10 minutes per print job, and it will result in an addition of up to 500 jobs per press over a period of one year. “This can be done by using reliable, predictable and repeatable technology." Like Russell, Beltman also hinted at hybrid digital technology as one of the solutions.