Direct-to-substrate proofing:
„Something new, that no one else offers“

As an established supplier to the packaging industry, Waldo Ltd. is renowned for delivering high quality files and plates. To maintain this hard-won recognition, the company requires the best available state-of-the-art technology in order to ensure high-quality spot and brand color reproduction as well as accurate halftone proofing. As an additional service, Waldo Ltd. also provides realistic mock-ups of final products.

At the end of 2020, the reprographics and platemaking specialist invested in the new proofing system developed by CGS ORIS and Mutoh Europe: A unique end-to-end digital print solution allowing direct-to-substrate proofing for packaging.

“This is what the flexo packaging industry has been looking for a long while,” states Phil Walmsley, Managing Director at Waldo. “We have been looking into different ways to produce proofs that are more lifelike. Paper proofs are OK but don’t give a true representation of the final printed product.”

“We wanted something that could actually create proofs on client’s original substrate. With a paper proof you have to make allowances for what it will look like on the final substrate”, he explains the challenges his company was facing.

“With this solution the proof and mock-ups look like the finished product product – particularly with a metallized film. Notoriously, metallized film will not back all the colors, chiefly the white. Now we can be sure it will match”, Phil summarizes the experience his team made during the first months using the new system.

The new opportunities open up a lot new chances: “That will give us the edge against our competitors,” says Phil on the system that is already opening doors. “It is something different and new that no one else offers. We are working closely with Modern Packaging, who has relationships with all the major retailers in the UK, to develop this. They are looking to put it out to their customers.”

Waldo also offers the new solution to design houses: “Our experience show, that many are not really aware of the intricacies of flexo packaging. But now we can deliver that touch and feel in the proofs which adds another level of excitement around the design development.”

As for return on investment Phil states: “We believe there is massive potential for this service. We can offer some significant savings in price. I was used to paying £120 a SKU for a mock-up. Now, we can make a considerable saving on that, especially, if we use offcuts that are sent to us to test. The finished print is also touch dry so we can easily get something out in the mail to meet deadlines. Being able to supply a more realistic and economically commercially viable proof is a win-win all round.”

Aside from immediately seeing how the solution answered Waldo’s needs, Phil said the longstanding relationship built up with CGS ORIS was also an important factor in the investment: “In 2014 I went to Packaging Innovations and saw the CGS ORIS software for the first time. I bought it there and then. I knew it could do what we were looking for. It did and we have worked with CGS ORIS ever since. I had a very similar feeling this time. It is great to work with CGS ORIS and Mutoh.”

Steve Chappell, Managing Director, ORIS Packaging Innovations UK, adds: “It has been great to work so closely with Phil and the team at Waldo as they have adapted their proofing capabilities to enhance the service they offer. They are committed to continually developing their customer focused approach to support creativity and exploration of new possibilities cost effectively. Their customers know they are in safe hands when they want to try something different. We are proud to be able to help create a solution that helps everyone involved push boundaries in a considered way that achieves outstanding results.”

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Extended gamut printing with X GAMUT leads to incredible competitive advantages

M Grup is a fully integrated printing house with photography, graphic design and a prepress production department – all under one roof.

The company prides itself on following international trends and is always looking for the latest intelligent tools to provide its customers with world-class services.

A large challenge – beyond quality expectations – is, of course, cost reduction to increase margins while maintaining the highest quality at the best price: “If you can deliver high quality – you are good, but if you can offer your customers an incomparable price at the same time you achieve an incredible competitive advantage – for your company, but more importantly for your valued customers”, explains Mehmet Turan Tahtasakal, Sales Manager at M Grup.

This is why, initially, the INK SAVER module gained the attention of the Turkish printing house. “With INK SAVER, we clearly reduced our ink consumption and overall production costs. But there was an additional benefit, which was even more important for us: The reduced make-ready times on all of our printing devices with the use of CGS ORIS color management.”

To realize further benefits and to optimize their processes, even more, M Grup integrated X GAMUT into their workflow. “With X GAMUT we finally use the full gamut of our Heidelberg CD74-8 and reproduce Pantone colors with a fixed ink set of CMYK+OGV. For example, we produce a local coffee and chocolate café recipe book in fantastic quality.“  

Optimized for each of their printing devices

Beyond that, profiling was a big challenge for the company. “We had a large problem with incoming customer creative files which were not always properly defined and correctly profiled to their required results”, Gökhan AkkamıŞ, Prepress Manager at M Grup.

Today, M Grup easily generates extended gamut profiles with X GAMUT which are adjusted and optimized for each of their printing devices – from flexo, digital to offset presses – with all different printing conditions and target-settings. “It doesn´t matter, if we do halftone printing, hybrid dots, or have various TACs or different media, with X GAMUT we can achieve accurate printing results on all of our production work.”

One additional benefit: “For many years we created our proofs with COLOR TUNER on Epson printers. We save a tremendous amount of time and money because we do not need to conduct expensive color trials on our production machines. Now, we can use exactly the same multi-color profiles, which were generated with X GAMUT for proofing and be confident that this is the color quality we expect to achieve on our production presses.”

M Grup and CGS ORIS have already had a long-standing successful partnership: “We were first introduced to CGS ORIS when we integrated our proofing system during our first Fogra certification process – in summer 2012. We are thrilled with the features and functions of CGS ORIS software tools. They guarantee that our services are consistently repeatable and measurable. Today, we are self-confident and know exactly what we can achieve and provide to our customers.”

Global communication of brand colors - consistent and effective

Our customer does business in more than 150 countries and has a large collection of over 200 brands. Several global players are included. They are one of the top consumer products companies in the world – according to their economic performance as well as their consumer relationship. Of course, color management is enormously important for them, because the look and feel of the brands, especially brand colors, always need to be perfect.

Needless to say, the company works with many different types of suppliers like packaging separators and printing companies all over the world. This caused a lot of color communication challenges in the past related to the exchange of data and printing results.

Accurate Color Exchange

On the one hand, several packaging separators edit and prepare data, put them in a color library and on the other hand, printing companies extract the data and produce with different printing machines and inks in individual environments. This workflow creates a complex environment and errors may occur which lead to a variation of printing results.

But, of course, the printing outcomes of the product labels, packaging or advertising material need to look accurate and consistent as defined by the designer – in every country and over time. This is vitally important for the company itself and its individual brands.

That means, the data, e.g. color aims, need to be communicated correctly between all involved parties. And the cooperation with the suppliers and the edited data files have to fit into the internal workflow. This includes, that the company has to be able to proof the results easily by themselves. For example, to check, if spot colors are correct and quality standards are reached.

Working with CxF data was nothing new for our customer. This global player already knew the advantages of CxF and had an existing color library, where suppliers could leverage that data to work with.

Unfortunately, the library was not well-organized or ready to use. It contained a lot of duplicate color data or data that was incomplete to the current CxF-4 standard. This was the first challenge in the process.

Additionally, the customer required a central location to administer and communicate CxF data, which any of its suppliers would be able to easily access and utilize. CXF TOOLBOX & CLOUD offered all of the desired functionality.

Standard Operating Procedure

Therefore, the common journey began with the organization of the company´s color library. The first task was to clean and organize the existing CxF library. In the next step, a standard operating procedure (SOP) was established and communicated to all suppliers to ensure the SOP worked well and
delivered the required results.

An onboarding process was started to synchronize the suppliers color data, equipment and teach all involved parties on how to use the tool, either personally or by webinars. The initial rollout phase took roughly one year. By the second year, our customer was already using CGS ORIS CXF software across their global network of suppliers.

Excellent Service & Support

The functional core benefits of CXF TOOLBOX & CLOUD were obvious to them, but the main reason they selected CGS ORIS as a strategic partner was the added value, extended by excellent service and support. They expressed: “CGS ORIS listened to our needs and built a solution for us” and “it is incredibly easy to gain secure access to our brand colors, these are our crown jewels”, which creates confidence in the supplier, and makes it easy to reach the aim to be one team with one color scheme“.

It was essential for them to “own” their color library and have the flexibility to easily create their own CxF color definitions, instead of using alternative solutions with limited customization capabilities. CXF TOOLBOX & CLOUD on the contrary are holistic solutions, which enable end-users to communicate and even export spot colors directly, e.g. for ink formulation.

Quality Assurance at any time

CGS ORIS tools offer the ability to characterize printing substrate during the creation of CxF data, they are not pre-determined. CGS ORIS makes it possible to verify supplier measurements, which is essential for quality assurance, and to certify color accuracy.

To sum up, this international brand owner benefited greatly by having full customization capabilities and the ability to brand CXF TOOLBOX & CLOUD as their own.

"CGS ORIS believes strongly in the benefits of CxF standards. This project was unique and exciting, offering both companies an opportunity to work together to develop a solution that elevated their ability to create and communicate brand colors like never seen before. CGS ORIS did not just sell a software product to the customer, we were there to clearly understand the individual company needs and requirements to develop a customized solution and services that delivered on those needs. Listening to and understanding our customer’s needs and requirements has always been a key to CGS ORIS’ success”, Andreas Kämmerer, Chief Operating Officer of CGS comments

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Quality Improvement with INK SAVER

By reducing ink, quality improvement is not possible, right? At first glance, most people will agree with this correlation. It’s unanimously believed that if you reduce the amount of ink the quality of the print will suffer. However, the opposite is true if you use the right tools as demonstrated here by the international STIEFEL Group.

Situated in Lenting, close to Ingolstadt, the company has 14 printing machines, 2 high-frequency welding towers, 4 guillotines and 3 laminators in their 5500m2 production hall.

Every day thousands of square meters of printed materials from giant fabric prints for flags, wall coverings, canopies and tablecloths, complex display banners and building wraps to foil printing for expo booths and vehicle wraps are produced. Direct printing to board and fleece wallpaper with imposing designs complete the STIEFEL portfolio.

This Upper Bavarian company also provides post-processing, delivery and assembly of the final product on site. Managing Director Bernhard Stiefel’s first priority is providing his customers with the best quality possible. Software from CGS gives him exactly that.

Just over a year ago, STIEFEL installed PRESS MATCHER with the INK SAVER module. “What’s most important in this solution is very clear to us, and that’s the quality improvement that we can achieve with it”, Bernhard Stiefel comments. “Printed results show considerably improved sharpness, they are noticeably more brilliant and edges are clearly defined” he said with satisfaction.

At first, he didn’t expect such incredible results. “We had already tried other ink-saving solutions, but none even came close to what we desired and this is why we were not convinced it was even possible. I was very positively surprised, because the results printed with ORIS Ink Saver even overachieved what CGS ORIS´ business partner, DRX Pack, had reported the software would deliver”, summarized Stiefel.

As well as the increase in quality, ink-saving was also outstanding. On average, the company is saving around 20 % in ink. For example on the Canon Colorado that‘s 22% in saved ink costs. On certain printing machines the ink saving was even greater.

Ink savings can depend on factors such as image design, printing substrate and the machine itself. STIEFEL has a wide range of equipment from DURST, HP, VUTek, Canon and SwissQPrint. “We save most on the foil machines where we see up to 35%”, according to Stiefel.

Over and above the quality and cost-saving benefits the Managing Director praised the ease of integration of the software with his existing workflow.

As well as quality improvement and less ink usage, the INK SAVER module brings other unexpected benefits along with it. Because there is less ink on the substrate, drying time is reduced so that the production process can be speed up and the printer freed up for additional customer projects.

(Photo Credit: CGS)

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