Case study – Steurs’ 360-degree approach broadens flexo

Steurs flexo press bureau

An anniversary is a time for reflection: a time to break, look back, and see how far ane'southward come up. Steurs Graphic Solutions tin can look back a long manner — seventy years, to 1949, when the two Steurs brothers started what has get i of Kingdom of belgium'southward leading packaging prepress houses. The backward look volition be a short 1 considering all eyes at the Antwerp-based business are firmly fixed on the present and the future — 'on continuing to create solutions for today and tomorrow,' as the company's tagline has it.

Steurs Graphic Solutions, 1 of the leading prepress bureau of Kingdom of belgium

Those solutions have to do a lot in today'southward packaging market, says full general director Dirk Cantens. "Nosotros piece of work across all three processes — gravure, offset and flexo — and the total spectrum of packaging materials: metal, plastic, folding cartons, drinking glass, and foil. Not only are we operating in a constantly irresolute sector, but one where every brand, printer, and converter has its own needs. Every environment is different." He adds, all the same, that there are some challenges that all these players face up. "To stand up out, packaging has to make an bear upon. Nosotros call it 'getting to the heart' of the consumer. And the impact is a combination of things — colour, image quality and, of course, creativity."

Dirk Cantens, general manager of Steurs

R&D makes the departure in impact

Steurs offers its clients all three, positioning itself equally a 360-caste service provider of prepress, premedia, and creative design. Since 2014 a further string to the Steurs bow has been the R&D department tasked with solutions development. Explains Cantens, "R&D is disquisitional to our philosophy, which is that to be a serious prepress partner, yous accept to exist able to innovate — to develop tailor-made solutions to customers' challenges. The section works closely with our sales and product managers, and is about always at the table when we're talking to brands and converters. We believe we're the only prepress supplier in our region that does this."

And then how does the approach work on a typical project? Later on the initial briefing, R&D creates a project plan to establish the steps needed to develop and implement the proposed solution: custom testing on the press, followed by in-depth assay. Next, Steurs engineers the screening and or color direction solutions — branded every bit S-dot and S-color respectively — needed to evangelize the project and submits recommendations to the customer. After sign-off, the solutions are implemented into the workflow.

In-house creative and prepress broaden flexo's appeal

S-dot was amid the commencement products of Steurs' R&D investment and illustrated the thinking behind the conclusion to set upwardly the section. The initial objective, Cantens explains, was to broaden the appeal of flexo to brands and converters. "It's accepted that flexo has advantages over starting time and gravure — lower cost, greater flexibility as regards substrates, and shorter lead times — and these are all important to brands and their printers. But in the past, doubts almost print quality and consistency outweighed them — things similar lower densities and flexo edges.

Steurs won a gold laurels at the inaugural Kodak Global Flexo Innovations Award

"That changed when Flexcel NX arrived on the scene, and in the final decade, flexo has come on leaps and bounds. So we decided to brand NX the platform for a new strategy to promote flexo as an alternative to the other processes, and fabricated information technology a priority for R&D to develop solutions for high-quality flexo to increase its quality and stability."

He describes S-dot as a group of screening technologies that Steurs applies to Flexcel NX to control ink transfer and dot gain either locally — in specific image areas — or beyond the plate. "This ways we can print variable densities of the same colour on the same plate, reproducing college densities for solid colors while reducing dot gain in screened areas. There'southward no edge on barcodes, and text is sharper. Whatever the substrate, we tin can guarantee these results. Today, more and more brands are convinced of flexo's benefits, quality concerns have faded, and they're willing to consider moving products across."

"We simply show them"

Asked how Steurs makes a case for flexo to brands and converters, Cantens' reply is concise, "We simply show them. We have an increasing number of successful projects in our portfolio, and these show what's possible — the faster fourth dimension-to-market, the lower costs, and and then on."

Steurs tin can too show prospective customers an expanding awards cabinet, dwelling to a Benelux Packaging Innovation Award (for Due south-dot), and a gold honour in 2018's inaugural Kodak Global Flexo Innovation Awards. The entry, printed CMYK on loftier-shrink PET-Grand cloth, was a joint project between Steurs and printer Helios Packaging, with whom Steurs has worked since 2022. The relationship came about when Helios — predominantly a gravure producer of shrink sleeves — decided to focus 100% on flexo.

This radical alter in strategy was driven by 3 new customer requirements: shorter pb-times, shorter runs, and greater price-efficiency. "Information technology was a bold determination past Helios," says Cantens, "only 1 based on a clear agreement of how the market is changing, peculiarly the retail sector where about of Helios' business is. It was made with eyes on the future." Approaching Steurs was a natural next motion, and the concluding three years accept seen steady progress in testing and fine-tuning new S-dot technology, including extending its application to shrink-foil.

The result is a growing number of brands looking seriously at flexo as an alternative to gravure and start. "We don't need to sell aggressively," says Cantens. "Usually, the samples speak for themselves, and all that the brands ask of the states is that the flexo result is equal to, or better than, gravure and that the design doesn't have to alter." He acknowledges that at that place remains a lingering perception that quality is an outcome, but says information technology'due south fading with every successful gravure-to-flexo conversion. "Each day, nosotros're proving the reverse."

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Source: https://packagingsouthasia.com/consumables/flexo-plates/case-approach-broadens-flexo/

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