As well as presenting opportunities for print firms, this trend is also throwing up a number of challenges and potential new revenue streams for printers and equipment manufacturers alike.
St Ives (UK) Music & Multimedia group sales director Mark Vincent says that part of this trend is resulting in a growing number of customers asking for jobs printed on unusual substrates, such as mirror and reverse boards, to make products stand out from the competition. However, special substrates can throw up technical problems such as how ink is absorbed, meaning printers must know which inks are appropriate for which substrates.
Brands are also increasingly turning to customisation, in the form of special finishes and unusually shaped packs, when they want to show they are offering something
different.
Combination clout
Wim Brunsting, UK managing director of label press manufacturer Gallus Group, has also noticed this trend. “Adding value is synonymous with combination printing. Of the new presses we sell, eight out of 10 are combination presses,” he says. Flexo is the dominant technology in label printing, but Brunsting says customers are using it in combination with screen printing, hot and cold foiling and varnishes to create more bespoke finishes.
A newer and more challenging market is printing onto flexible plastic. “Labels are a major industry, so we know them inside and out, but printed flexible packaging is newer,” says Brunsting. He adds there is a big push in the industry for a greater degree of chemical knowledge. “When working with non-absorbent substrates and wraparound sleeves, you have to be very knowledgeable about inks and how they mix with substrates.”
Brunsting gives the example of a round bottle in a shrink sleeve. If the sleeve has a high level of friction, it can stop the bottle turning freely on the production line, thus holding up the whole line. A low-friction varnish is necessary to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Space saving
Mark Kerridge, managing director of folding carton group Benson Box, says it is the practicality of the square cartonboard box, both from a printing and logistical perspective, that is ensuring its continued popularity. “You are filling a cuboid space on a supermarket shelf, so you end up with square boxes. These then fill a square space in the supply chain and in cupboards at home.”
The fact that the bulk of all packaging is very similar in shape means differentiating products is key. “The challenge of the pack is to sell the product inside when it’s on the shelf,” says Kerridge. “The focus has always been on print quality, but we have also seen a significant increase in requests for windows in cartons.”
As well as enabling customers to see the product they are buying, Kerridge says there is another advantage to windows. “Supermarkets like windows because they make the carton lighter, so it meets the drive to reduce the weight of packaging waste,” he explains. This drive is partly due to the Courtauld Commitment – an agreement between the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and 31 major retailers, brand owners and suppliers to reduce packaging waste (this reduction is measured by weight).
However, Kerridge acknowledges that there is a contradiction in the use of windows for this reason. “It meets the weight drive, but not the sustainability drive.” The majority of plastic windows cannot be recycled and must be removed from the carton before the cardboard can be recycled.
To this end, many manufacturers are producing packs made of a single material, to aid recycling. St Ives is launching a CD case made entirely from cardboard. The case removes the need for plastic, instead using a paper-based tray.
The drive to reduce the weight of packaging is causing a number of retailers and brand owners to demand the use of thinner, and therefore lighter, board. However, this can cause problems for printers, says Jon Basford, sales manager at carton manufacturer Boxes Prestige – part of Clondalkin Group.
“As a manufacturer, you want to use the material that will perform best in terms of printability, creasing and gluing,” says Basford. However, the market is being led by environmental concerns.
Boxes Prestige manufactures cartonboard packaging for Thorntons and Basford has been working closely with the chocolate retailer to reduce the weight of its boxes. “We have gone down in calliper, to a thinner board. Previously, we were using a board that was around 540 microns, but the new board we have sourced is infinitely stronger and therefore we can reduce the weight to 450 microns, with the same strength and durability for creasing.”
Recycled board can also pose problems, says Kerridge. The fibres in recycled board are shorter, due to being reprocessed, which makes the board weaker. This means that to achieve the same strength, you can be forced to increase the thickness of the board, which contradicts efforts to reduce weight.
Gallus’ Brunsting says customers are also working with thinner substrates in flexibles, and this can cause problems t with materials stretching in the press. “Driers should only produce UV energy, but they still produce a lot of heat. When you put heat on a substrate such as polyethylene (PE) it stretches and stretching is not good in a press,” he explains.
Offset quality
While flexo is dominant in labels and flexible plastics, offset litho is the method of choice for folding cartons. “More than 95% of the folding cartons we print are done offset litho,” says Benson Box’s Kerridge. “With cartons, the emphasis is on good graphic qualities, we often require a photographic finish. The quality of offset litho is very high. Digital is not having any significant impact in folding cartons.”
However, an area where digital print is starting to make inroads is in CD and DVD packaging, according to St Ives’ Vincent. “There’s a lot more personalisation in music
packaging, particularly for promotional CDs and free give-aways.” However, for longer runs offset litho is still the dominant technology.
The consolidated nature of the UK retail market means that the majority of food packaging is based on very long runs, in order to be stocked in every branch of a supermarket chain from Land’s End to John O’Groats. For this reason, says Kerridge, the UK packaging industry is also heavily consolidated. “The retailers are very consolidated at one end of the supply chain. And at the other end, the food producers and board mills are too. The printed carton manufacturers are in the middle.” He adds that packaging printers have to be able to deliver economies of scale, to give giants such as Tesco what they want. And, as the saying goes, what Tesco wants, Tesco gets.
Catherine Dawes is features editor of PrintWeek’s sister title Packaging News
CASE STUDY: A TALE OF TWO PIES
Higgidy had been selling its unbranded pies and quiches to pubs and restaurants, and wanted to move into mainstream supermarkets. The packaging had to create a brand identity and convey the gourmet quality of the pies.
Higgidy co-founder and development director Camilla Stephens was concerned that once the pies were put into a box, customers wouldn’t be able to see their hand-finished crusts – the sign of a good pie. Ziggurat Brands designed a box with a curved cut-out window, which echoed the shape of the pie. The window goes across the top of the box and down one side, to show off the crust.
This created a number of challenges for printer Alexir Packaging. Firstly, putting a window into a box, particularly in the side, weakens it, so care needed to be taken to ensure it retained its rigidity. The placing of the window means the inside of the box is visible, so Ziggurat asked Alexir to print the inside of the box as well as the outside.
The boxes are printed offset litho on a six-colour Komori. Alexir account manager Scott Wilkins explains that as the pies come into direct contact with the printed interior, a food-grade laminate has to be applied over the printed surface. The board can then be die-cut and the acetate window glued in place.
However, the laminate means that standard glue will not adhere properly. Alexir developed a glue that was suitable for use with foods and adhered to the laminate. The resulting packaging has shelf-standout, shows off the crust, and is now stocked in Sainsbury’s stores across the UK.
When Sainsbury’s wanted to repackage its own-brand baked goods, it took a different approach. The retailer wanted to combine the appeal of an old-fashioned paper bakery bag with the advantages of modern film packaging.
FFP Packaging created a finish that looks and feels like paper, using a combination of flexo print and multiple lacquer coats. The ink and coatings are applied inline on an-eight-colour wide web flexo press. The packaging is supplied on a reel, ready to run with no modification required to standard flow-wrap machinery.
Read the original article at www.printweek.com.
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