Inline Finishing becomes Daily Business

(NPES International E-commerce Website, July 23, 2008) Since Drupa 2004 the demand for paper handling and finishing technologies has grown worldwide, especially in commercial and packaging printing. In parallel with this, however, the trend has been to small batch sizes with at the same time an increasing demand for ever more diverse finishing techniques and combinations.

Over the last three years, the trend to more color has considerably speeded up and customers are also demanding higher quality products. The manufacturers of machinery for the printing and media industry have responded to this development not just with long presses for multi-color production but also with additional printing units that offer the possibility of inline finishing. These involve combinations of offset units with flexo technology in the same press. Equally, the demand for reduced change-over and conversion times, energy saving and the ability to handle consumables such as films, adhesives, coatings or inks that help save resources have all clearly increased since 2004.

Whilst there were interesting solutions for product finishing on show in Dusseldorf in 2004, they have now become an absolutely central element for adding value to high quality printed matter and packaging. Various types of coating, gold and silver ink applications, die-cutting, stamping, hot or cold foil applications are just so many terms - it is only when used to produce actual products that they display the value that they can add.
It is precisely with such forms of finishing, which confer on printed products their unique characteristics, that both machinery and materials manufacturers are gearing their offerings at Drupa 2008 in response to market developments.
Impurities in foodstuffs and drinks packaged in cartons have become an increasing bone of contention over recent years. ITX (2-isopropylthioxanthone), which is a danger to health, has been found on the laminated rear - and future inner- side of printed packaging materials, having been transferred following rewinding of the reel. In order to reduce such impurities, non-migrating binding agents and coatings have been developed for inline finishing.

Quality aspects
An inline process such as cold foiling with the Prindor foiler can deliver outstanding quality if all the parameters – that is the foil, substrate, adhesive and subject are correctly tailored to each other. It is capable of producing solid foiled areas of the kind frequently found on labels or high quality packaging without any problem and without the need for the high temperatures that with hot foil stamping often lead to register problems. At the same time, its ability to deliver particularly high resolutions allow it to reproduce fine type, filigree design elements, thin lines and fine halftone dots. The Prindor inline foiler is suitable for all print media, whether packaging or labels. Not only does it make attractive design features possible, it is also able to produce security features that are almost impossible to forge.

Competition at the point of sale
Companies want to set themselves apart in their communications, and packaging for their products must be clearly different from that of the competition at the point of sale. The 'outfit' of the printed object should clearly convey the value and reflect the image of the company and its products. In the cosmetics industry it is openly said that the product sells itself through its packaging, and the demands placed on the latter are therefore correspondingly high.

Modern production techniques offer previously undreamt-of added value for high quality printed products. But fine does not have to mean expensive. For such promotional materials ever-shorter lead times are demanded, and so at DRUPA 2008 the manufacturers are presenting systems that use the latest electronics to aid the production of displays that promote or hold products. Flatbed digital printing processes are playing an increasing role in this area of production.

Self-promotion
Many print service providers have upgraded their technology and are able to offer economical inline finishing but again and again the need to advise the customer is underestimated. It is not enough to say to a customer, 'We are now able to use UV or other coatings'. The customer needs to be enthused with ideas and persuaded to actually exploit these capabilities. There is plenty of positive feedback in the form of examples of the success that customers have achieved with their customers through higher levels of finishing. Essentially, people have been quicker to learn how to use the new techniques than to market their new technical accomplishments.