Spot colors are an integral part of packaging printing. But their use brings certain disadvantages. Read how you can resolve many problems easily.

Process optimization with X GAMUT

Online ordering today allows for multiple design iterations with personalized typeface selections and a host of special colors. Even product packaging can be turned into an individual “Limited Edition” with just a few clicks.

Personalized muesli packs, shower gels with pictures, or drink cans with logo and special themes for the perfect look at the next company function, can all be produced this way.

Stefan Harder makes many of these items possible. Under the names “Labelprint24” and “Partylables24” his company offers his customers complete packaging solutions.

The customer hardly realizes how complex the process is to produce these many individual wishes. But already, since the founding of his company in 2010, the CEO and Owner of Harder-Online GmbH has continually worked on perfecting the ideal job workflow, with the mantra of intelligent job and process automation.

A decisive piece of the jigsaw in Stefan Harder’s cleverly thought out system is now provided by the color management software X GAMUT.

If a customer, for example, designs his particular muesli can on mymuesli.com all the job files and data are automatically uploaded from there, overnight, into Harder-Online’s system, checked for printability (also automatically) and prepared for printing.

And then comes the decisive questions of any online printer: On which press should we now print for the best possible result? Which color space are we looking for? How can we reproduce spot colors accurately with our ink sets?

X GAMUT delivers all answers. The software decides which available press will produce the best result, converts the print data and sends it to the selected press so that the job can be produced.

Even the printing substrate, short delivery times and job costs are taken into consideration. In the case of mymuesli the whole process, from data input to the finished product, takes just 12 hours.

Stefan Harder and CGS ORIS have worked together for over five years. It all began with PRESS MATCHER, used to calibrate his complete fleet of presses - so-called “cross-fleet color management”, to bring all presses to a consistent print result and a common standard. In addition to his two workhorses, Screen Truepress Jet L350 UV printers, Harder has, among others, an HP Indigo WS6800 and an HP Indigo 12000 in operation.

“Stefan Harder was already an advocate of the ‚X-Gamut‘ idea. We worked earlier together on how special colors could be separated in more than four colors” explains Bernd Rückert, CGS ORIS Product Marketing Manager.

“We are very happy that we made a contribution to press optimization at harder-online with X GAMUT. It’s very nice to see how perfectly and easily the product can be integrated into an existing workflow and there be key function in the order process”, he continues.

(Photo credits: Harder-Online GmbH)

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Printing Spot Colors With X GAMUT Instead of Spot Inks

The ZRP Printing Group Co., Ltd. is one of the top 20 printers in China and the biggest manroland user worldwide. The company was founded in 1978 and has four production bases in China today. The largest has an area of 100,000 m2.

The group has approx. 3000 employees and is responsible for 120 brand customers. Many of them are part of the FMCG branch. ZRP has had its focus on the offset market, but is now expanding its digital and flexo printing business. They are specialized in customized industry solutions and produce high-quality consumer packaging products with outstanding finishings on several materials as well as promotional tools and smart e-commerce solutions. ZRP is a member of the Global Packaging Alliance (GPA).

Spot and brand colors are very important for the global player and the multi-national corporations ZRP is working with. The unique spot colors attract attention and can help to build up a strong brand recall value. In addition, intelligent custom solutions and promotional material are increasingly in demand as well as special effects in food packaging and other individualized campaigns. In one of the projects conducted for a famous cookie brand, customers were able to customize the product online and to track the delivery route.

In 2004 CGS ORIS joined forces with ZRP to increase the capacities for providing individualized solutions tailored to their customers‘ requirements. First of all, ZRP has used COLOR TUNER. After substantial investments in digital printing, they decided to work with the new CGS product X GAMUT.
 
During their large project with a multi-national consumer goods corporation, the great power of X GAMUT was impressively demonstrated. Using the new multi-channel functionality, ZRP was able to import, measure and re-separate the 13 spot colors used in air freshener packaging samples and to convert these spot colors easily and reliably into a fixed ink set comprising CMYK, orange, green and violet – while completely maintaining visual brand identity.

The benefits they gained from all this were enormous: Large time savings owing to shorter ink changing, job change-over, press wash-up and press downtimes as well as more flexibility resulting from the ability to print jobs including different spot colors on the same press and in the same run.

As a result, ZRP was able to reduce production and delivery times and to increase overall productivity. This allowed them to offer their services to more customers and at more competitive prices. Finally, costs could be cut considerably because of reduced (spot) ink consumption, less ink to be kept on stock and less ink waste. All this allowed our customer to maximize their profits.

This project and the calculations which were made during the tests showed that ZRP was able to save 376 hours of total press time, 20 percent of ink costs and RMB 370,000 of printing costs (approx. EUR 45,000) during the first half of 2017, which means that productivity could be increased by almost 50 percent – just with one single print project.

(Photo credits: ZRP/CGS ORIS)

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50 % Ink Saving - 100 % Results

The desire of any business owner is to find the key to reducing his operating expenses by half.

14:00 Production meeting at Hanbuch Packaging. Amongst complex advertising displays for pharmacies, life-size advert cubes for car dealerships and 3D-looking posters for cinemas, Andreas’ team is discussing upcoming projects. In the background you can hear the hum of the machines from the printing hall.

The business is booming. Incoming orders are diverse. In spite of, or because of that, efficient organization of the production process is more important than ever. The best utilization of the printing presses is top priority. Production for the next few days is carefully planned out on the electronic whiteboard: What will be produced in-house, what needs to be sent out to sub-contractors for offset printing? Everything is covered by this company in Pfungstadt, from original concept to finished packaging or final display in the store.

(Andreas Hanbuch & Felix Faller)

Clever planning is one thing. The other is continued development. Which is great when you have men like Felix Faller. The former offset printer is only a few months with the company but has already implemented one major change.

“I looked at order processing and workflows and it was immediately clear to me that we could significantly improve production with software from CGS ORIS”, explains Faller. “I was very familiar with products from CGS ORIS at my previous company“.

After two production test runs, the CEO was convinced and, since the middle of January, PRESS MATCHER has been in full production. Its ink saver function has been of greatest benefit. “We are saving 50 – 60% ink on each print run” says Faller.

There is a large job being printed on the Durst Rho P10 200. It is a series of special stand-up displays for an advertising campaign of a well-known soft drink producer for beverage stores.

“You can see it clearly on this job” says Faller, showing the monitor. “You can check the ink consumption with, and without, INK SAVER” as he switches between both tables showing the calculated ink usage. 260 sheets on the Durst require just 8 liters of ink compared to 26 liters without ink saving.

It is not at the expense of quality. On the contrary, fine details in the images can be seen more clearly because they are not clogged by too much ink laydown. That is especially noticeable in darker areas and shadows. What is also important for the packs printed on the DURST is that lower ink density increases wear resistance and reduces ink breaks across folds.

Less ink coverage brings with it some unexpected benefits. “While it is not normally possible to speed up the UV printer despite the faster drying time, the intensity of the UV lamps can be reduced leading to longer lamp life and lower energy costs”, adds Faller.

With 50 – 60% ink saving per print job, Hanbuch Packaging is well over the average of 20 percent ink reduction of other users. Each job is individually evaluated and maximum ink savings calculated, not just for ink and press but also for the design and end-use of the product.

Felix Faller, responsible as Production Manager for the pre-press and printing departments, is obviously happy with the performance of the software: “It is not just the cost savings. With PRESS MATCHER we get great color stability across all machines. At the beginning I was really surprised at how we could achieve the same result on all of them. On top of that, we can reproduce special colors and match standards with ease. In the past that took an enormous amount of time and effort going around and around again. Since we got the software, we no longer have that problem, it fits perfectly.”

(Photo credits: Hanbuch Packaging, CGS ORIS)

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