By Jochen Sproll, Business Development Manager, Koenig & Bauer Durst

How digital transformation is powering enhanced customer experience and revenue growth

Industry innovators are always in for a highly educational, informative and inspirational SPC Open House at the Durst Innovation Center East in Lienz, Austria. We always want to ensure that the content is both fresh and with latest ‘news’, both from ourselves and for the industry in general.

Our last event had a focus on “Digital Transformation in Corrugated Packaging”. It explored key drivers shaping production demand. It considered, too, how digital technology responds in an agile and flexible way while also ensuring cost efficiency.

Attendees were told how demand for digital printing in packaging is growing in response to the proliferation of SKUs, increased interest in regionalization, enhanced product life cycle management, and the ability to keep pace with the ever-changing regulatory environment.

The result is the need to produce more jobs per day, meet faster turnaround times, deliver shorter run lengths, and manage planning complexity. There is also greater expectation for food safety and circular economy capabilities.

Digital production aids profitability with lower costs for shorter runs, optimised production, reduced waste, and obsolescence. It also requires less working capital and future-proofs production with water-based inks. It elevates customer experience and revenue growth via optimised print and total costs while delivering improved value for the customer.

This is partly due to existing and new trends bringing run lengths down (currently the average run length is 5,000 to 6,000 sqm), better utilization of conventional technology, and clearer total cost of ownership calculation of existing production volume to explore whether an investment will pay off.

For example, when comparing SPC to flexo, the break-even was found to be between 6,500 and 8,500 sqm. Digital printing was cheaper to produce and increased overall production output by 50% and productivity by 25%. The cost saving on digital addressable volume was €2.5m and the payback on the investment in SPC technology was two to three years.

Digital’s ability to focus on automation and standardization of processes with few touch points aids the understanding and optimization of the total cost of supply chain for customers. The streamlined workflow powers smooth operation and delivers a number of production gains:

• Shorter lead times and faster reaction times.
• Less complexity with the elimination of the plate process.
• Process waste saving equals 160k sqm of board saved.
• Ability to use a thinner top-liner equals 15% savings.
• No need to manage set up for design changes.

Digital production supports a collaborative, close working, customer experience with brands. Its ability to produce new test packaging, designs and campaigns quickly enables a better understanding of marketing objectives. It allows the cost effective production of smaller batch sizes and eases the move to supply chain management and partnership (different pricing models based on value of supply chain costs and not volume of boxes produced).

There is also the greater possibility of expanding a brand’s added value applications. In fact, 50% to 80% of volume over time is for new added value applications in the Koenig & Bauer Durst customer base. They include mass customization, sequential barcodes, new product offerings on uncoated board and, as mentioned before, test and promotional packaging.

Kärcher, known for its high-pressure cleaners, is one international brand that has moved the majority of its printing requirements to digital. In 2022, 52% of its jobs were digital compared to just 1% in 2015. As a result, it now benefits from simple data handling with pre-press, uniformed colour consistency, time savings in production without additional costs for printing plates, decreased quantities but increased variants and frequent layout changes due to constantly legal requirements.

Enabling brands to make this transition are operations like Schumacher Group. The family-managed company with sites across Europe registered a record month for production on its Delta SPC 130 in March 2022. In 28 days the press completed 226 jobs and printed 1,346,954.56 sqm. 73% jobs were produced without primer.

Koenig & Bauer Durst supports operations such as Schumacher with comprehensive prepress training (profiling, ink saving, embellishment), operator training (press efficiency, quality, maintenance), sales training (application training, product offerings), business knowledge transfer and a proven technology with most automated, productive, single pass water-based presses suitable for food packaging.

Koenig & Bauer Durst also delivers responsive service and customer care with remote diagnostics and telephone service as well as software and workflow support to ensure highest level of uptime.

Talk to Koenig & Bauer Durst or its partners discover more about how to introduce these business benefits, and more, by transitioning to digital production.

Make sure our next SPC Open House in Lienz on 27-28 September is in your diary!

 

By Dr Stefan Kappaun, Executive Vice President of Inks and Fluids, Durst Group

Inks safety, security and standards – our market offering

With regulations in food packaging continuing to tighten, we believe the cost and ability to comply with the future regulatory curve will be easier to achieve with water-based inks.

We also believe that the ever-changing regulatory environment means it is essential to eliminate as many process steps with third-party fluids as possible.

The design of our SPC inks means corrugated converters can print without using a priming fluid, if they chose, and there is no need for an additional overprint varnish fluid and process step.

We have achieved this through adding a sealing step in the water-based ink to give abrasion resistance, gloss effect and anti-slip characteristics.

Our initiatives have had the added environmental impact of being able to reduce paper consumption. The ink enables a ‘non-touch’ printing process with no analogue primer or OVP (Over Print Varnish) resulting in potential topliner savings of up to 20%. This design results in fewer humectants (substances that attract and retain moisture) and vaporable compounds compared to other water-based ink systems.

Another process that will become a bigger issue in the future is deinking – the removal of printing ink from the recovered paper during the paper recycling process. We, in tandem with the industry, will continue to work tirelessly to push the regulatory framework on this important topic.

Our food-safe, water-based inks currently conform to all regulatory standards – such as Swiss Ordinance List, Nestlé and Good Manufacturing Practice – and have achieved the UL ECOLOGO® Certification recognized as a gold standard for sustainability credentials. In general, external certifications are used by us to ensure compliance with even the most robust regulations for food safety, security and sustainability. We are convinced that our water-based inks will be more likely to comply in the future as regulations further tighten.

Meeting the regulatory framework for food safety, security and sustainability is enabled by including a cross-linkable water dispersible polymer in our inks that cannot migrate due to its molecular weight. The corresponding organically pigmented, water-based inks have very high-water contents. The speciality resin in combination with the aqueous carrier allows odour-free and robust printing. A sealing step included in the SPC dryer ensures good gloss and scratch resistance without overcoating.

And what about the future? We, as a world leader within food-safe ink research and development, will continue on-going testing for migration in extreme conditions to prove safety.

Whereas it is the responsibility of converters to test and ensure that they comply with industry standards, we will continue to offer expert advice and support them with testing.

Key mega trends shaping carton manufacturing and how the latest technology responds shared at customer event

 

The trends and drivers shaping the future of carton manufacturing were identified and discussed last month when Koenig & Bauer Durst invited carton printers to Radebeul, Germany, home of the sheetfed production centre.

Around 100 interested carton converters, from across Europe and North America, listened to the wide-ranging discussions and learned more about Koenig & Bauer Durst’s solution to help them capitalise on emerging opportunities.

 

After Ralf Sammeck, Member of the Board at Koenig & Bauer with responsibility for Sheetfed, joined Koenig & Bauer Managing Director Robert Stabler to officially open the event, Dr Sean Smyth, print technologist and consultant for Smithers, listed the mega trends influencing today’s packaging environment.

They included sustainability and carton production’s place in a circular economy. Also detailed were the advantages of digital printing in eliminating the need for plates, water, and chemistry, and reducing set up time and waste, while improving responsiveness to demand.

The impact of micro and macroeconomics were explored – demographic shifts from the growth in affluent, educated consumers, to changing population age profiles and the rise in individual preferences. Sean expanded on how technology specific to packaging is evolving to deliver higher quality in an increasingly agile and responsive way.

Legislation is also shaping printing requirements both in terms of on pack information and post use disposal while enhanced supply chain management and track and trace capabilities enable improved stock oversight and brand protection.

These, he said, were set against a back drop of positive growth for carton makers in 2022. Growth that is expected to continue with cartons predicted to reach the equivalent of a billion A4 prints by 2028 and digital carton volumes in North America and Europe predicted to enjoy a compound annual growth rate of just under 20% to 2027.

 

At the same time average runs are falling with operations under pressure to manage many more short-medium runs. Sean pointed out that a shift in all carton volume from 26% to 29% equates to 20 million more jobs and asked: “How do you manage more jobs in your shop effectively?”

Robert Stabler detailed how to build a business case in digital printing in folding carton markets and outlined key solutions developed for carton converters.

He highlighted how the latest technology in the modular VariJET 106, that can utilise offset and flexo functionality, helps future proof investment. The B1 5,500sph press platform for folding carton packaging makes simple work of limited-run seasonal and personalised, targeted packaging.

A water based, food safe and deinkable ink set, developed with exceptional rub resistant characteristics, ensures food safe production meeting current and future regulatory and environmental standards. The most recent of which is the updated The Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive that aims to ensure that all packaging is reusable or recyclable in an economically feasible way by 2030.

 

The VariJET 106 leverages the know-how and expertise of Koenig & Bauer’s leadership in offset printing with Durst’s digital inkjet prowess. This enables the delivery of offset quality while harnessing the flexibility of digital allowing customers to build new, highly responsive business models. Based on Koenig & Bauer’s standard high performance Rapida 106, it features standard components for infeed, priming, coating and delivery. It incorporates Durst printhead electronics, inkjet expertise, proprietary workflow, and RIP technology.

Highly automated file submission, approval and delivery to the press is managed by Durst Workflow. It also automates unique coding and numbering applications for track and trace applications. The optional Smart Shop module provides a full e-commerce front end, including design and job submission tools while the comprehensive analytics tool set, reports detailed performance data and KPIs that aid press optimisation.

All of which help contribute to a convincing TCO (total cost of ownership) when evaluating whether an investment will pay off, where the volume break even points are to ensure more accurate costings, and how the most effective technology utilisation can be achieved. Other benefits such as how digital just-in-time print production can help reduce storage costs and obsolescence were also explored.

Attendees watched as the press was put through its paces and seamlessly ran five carton jobs in just over 15 minutes, which included job-changes on the fly at a top speed of 5,500sph. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!” Three featured the same stock with design and ink coverage changes. Next was a spot varnished job on a different board with a changeover of varnish plate. The final job included board size change and another spot varnish.

 

The event included updates on the installation of the first beta press that will be up and running this month (May). Preparations are underway to install a second in June and a commercial customer is planning production from Q3. Other systems are under construction.