Discussion converts to business at Emballage

With over 85,000 visitors to Emballage, the exhibition was counted as a resounding success by the organiser, Comexposium. And although the show was dominated by packaging companies, there were converting and materials companies present too, hoping to attract potential customers onto their stands.

Atlantic Zeiser was at the show to demonstrate the Digiline web system. Visitors to the company’s stand witnessed the system’s advanced capabilities and saw how it can be easily integrated into their own set-ups.

Print service providers are reportedly improving productivity and increasing customer satisfaction by investing in web integrated end-to-end system solutions. The Digiline systems are said to deliver high-impact results that rival offset for quality and production speed, and can be used by print providers operating in the packaging, labelling, product and paper sectors.

The systems are claimed to be highly flexible and scalable, and have been developed in co-operation with leading brand owners and packaging producers. Such close collaboration has ensured the solutions help users to drive cost efficiencies in late-stage customisation and just-in-time production.

The systems allow print service providers to meet the most stringent print quality requirements, and are said to be perfect for printing variable data and content on porous and non-porous substrates.

Digiline web solutions simplify the process of late-stage customisation for labels and packages with high-quality print requirements, particularly regarding variable data on challenging substrates with low colour adhesion. They are used for a variety of applications, such as personalising, marking and coding labels, booklet labels and flexible packaging printing to reduce printing costs per piece to a minimum.

Quadraxis was promoting its ‘high-level’ pre-production and prepress solutions. It has developed Pigmentz to create and enrich 3D contents. The Thermo 3D Suite V.2 software editor can reconstruct a 3D template of a container; visualise the original artwork on the 3D template; calculate distortions and pre-distortion of the design; and create a 3D pdf file.

Quadraxis’ solution is said to ‘free industrial printers from printing and shaping constraints’. As well as Thermo 3D for thermoformed parts, the company offers Sleeve 3D for shrink and stretch sleeves; and MetalCan 3D for metal products.

Swedish 3D visualisation and animation company Virtuell Design launched its cgPackShot service for making photoreal 3D computer graphic product images.

The web-based service is said to cut significantly the cost and time involved in making photoreal 3D images of products and enable the visualisation of new product designs and colours on demand, without any knowledge of 3D computer graphics.

Primera Technology Europe presented its new FX1200e Finisher, said to offer, in one single automatic process, the ability to laminate, die cut, slit, rewind and remove the waste matrix. One of the main benefits is the speed of up to 6.1m/min, which is achieved with Primera’s patent-pending QuadraCut technology. This uses up to four knife blades across the web. This feature ‘dramatically’ increases throughput compared with systems that have just a single blade, says the company.

Instead of hard tooled or flexible steel dies, the FX1200e uses digitally controlled tungsten carbide steel knife blades. “Users never have to buy a die or wait for it to be made,” remarked Andreas Hoffmann, Managing Director of Primera Europe.

The company also launched the CX1200e Colour Label Press, which is said to deliver short run, full-colour digital label printing at a competitive price. It features 305mm unwind/rewind – print up to 381m x 216mm wide/run; up to 2,400dpi print resolution; up to 5m/min print speed; and super high-yield toner cartridges.