The integration brings together Esko WebCenter, a web-based platform tailored for CPG and pharmaceutical teams to manage aspects of the packaging management workflow from creation to approval and distribution, with GlobalVision’s automated proofreading platform, Verify. The result means a unified and user-friendly workflow that streamlines quality inspections and ensures 100% accuracy, compliance, and print readiness.

A key feature is the single-Click file inspection tools for compliance. The built-in automated text compare, spell check, graphics, barcode and braille inspections ensure that files are compliant with global regulatory requirements by checking files as they move through the WebCenter workflow.

Security and data protection with the closed-loop integration is said to ensure that files leaving WebCenter are securely transferred to Verify, prioritising data security and protecting sensitive information.

Another feature is the seamless artwork management workflow. This reduces the number of revisions needed, improve productivity, and create more synergy in the artwork management workflow by connecting Verify to WebCenter, allowing for single click file transfers between the two.

The Verify integration in WebCenter brings together speed, precision, and security to address the challenges faced by artwork, labelling and quality control teams to save time and maintain compliance by automating proofreading throughout the artwork management process.

Michael Malz, chief product officer at GlobalVision, commented, ‘Esko and GlobalVision teams have been hard at work for many months to bring this new integration to life. Accessing GlobalVision tools from within the WebCenter workflow has been a key function our shared customers have been requesting, as it brings quality inspections right where users need them.’

Jan De Roeck, Esko director of marketing, industry relations and strategy, added, ‘We are dedicated to developing solutions that accelerate the go-to-market of packaged goods. We are always keen to ensure our customers are making the very most of their Esko software and we are delighted to have worked with GlobalVision on this integration.’

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Greens will be supplied with four of the latest Ricoh Pro C9500s; two Ricoh C9500s have already been installed, with two more to follow this year. Additional Pro 8300 mono series devices will also be added to the portfolio later in 2024.

With over 100 years in the communications, documentation and logistics industry, Greens produce clinical research materials for drug trials, with its document construction and global distribution. The company’s other main areas of operation include data and transactional print, mailing and distribution.

Daniel Buckland, group finance director at Greens, commented, ‘This most recent investment in Ricoh technology has enabled us to further improve our existing offerings to our customers and to build further workflow automation into our production environment, which is helping to support the continuing growth of our web to print platform Doxzoo. All of this results in enhanced operational efficiencies for our business and higher-quality output for our customers.’

Tim Carter, commercial print director at Ricoh Graphic Communications, added, ‘We are delighted to extend our partnership with Greens for the next five years. The instalment of the latest Ricoh Pro C9500 will drive a wide range of positive impacts for the customer, generating business success and long-term growth.’

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Reconomy combines technology and skills to enable businesses to better manage their resources, helping to reduce waste, optimise their supply chains and contribute in a meaningful way towards the circular economy.

While this involves working directly with print companies, Reconomy has also partnered with several leading manufacturers and distributors, supporting its customers with textile waste management. One such partnership is with Soyang Europe, whereby printers using materials from Soyang Europe can responsibly dispose of their waste.

This partnership came about three years ago with the support of Fespa UK. Reconomy was working on sustainability initiatives with Fespa, while Soyang Europe is a long-term member of the association.

The process works with Reconomy providing customers with a baler to prepare their textile waste. Soyang Europe then collects the bales when delivering new products to customers, with the waste taken to its facility in Altham in Lancashire ready for bulk collection and transportation to a recycling facility for processing.

‘It was a perfect fit,’ said Reconomy’s director Jon Hutton. ‘Soyang has always been proactive in wanting to offer their customers, and the wider industry, waste management solutions for their products.

‘Sustainability is a hot topic for several reasons. Brands and consumers are looking down the supply chain for environmental credentials, so it’s therefore a driving factor in how to not only maintain and gain business, but how a printer positions themselves for the long term.’

Mark Mashiter, managing director at Soyang Europe, added, ‘It provides our customers with an outlet for their waste. This works well with local customers when we deliver orders to them; we can bring any textile bales back with us and store them in our yard until they are collected.’

Originally, Reconomy had sourced a solution for recycling PVC banner and polyester fabrics at a UK site, whereby waste was blended with other polymers to produce low grade products. While this process ended when more desirable material became available to the market, a recovery route was soon set up and, with the support of Wheeldon Brothers, waste could now be diverted from landfill to renewable energy.

However, recycling has since been re-established and material is again being used in manufacturing processes. Coupled with its use for renewable energy, all of this is helping work towards a circular economy.

An additional benefit to the service is that Soyang Europe is willing to take other supplier’s waste textiles along with its own. This option is available to customers using their own transport within a set radius of Soyang Europe’s facility and when making deliveries.

‘Soyang Europe wants to be part of the environmental solution and not the problem,’ Jon said. ‘The take-back scheme provides a platform for printers to demonstrate their sustainability by providing customers with an outlet for their recycling waste.

‘Several customers have engaged with Reconomy further and are now collecting their own clients’ end-of-campaign textiles, integrating this with the collection of their materials. All loads are tracked, and Certificates of Recycling can be issued once the material has been processed.’

The work does not stop here for Reconomy, with Mr Hutton saying the company will continue to work with Soyang Europe, Fespa UK and its wider membership base to provide more sustainable solutions to the UK industry. 

‘It’s our aim to continue to be a driving force in educating the industry on the importance of recycling and developing circular economies,’ Mr Hutton said. ‘This, with the continued support of Soyang Europe, will ensure more customers take up this service.’

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Already installed in over 30 locations across Europe as part of the Avery TrafficJet turnkey road signage printing system, the VKR3200 HS as shown at Fespa has an updated industrial design and prints CMYK plus white, with a further varnish option. The printer operates at up to 317sqm/hr in two-pass draft mode, which is also suitable for mesh work, and typically between 120 and 140sqm/hr in production mode.

The VKR3200 HS  can handle two rolls of up to 1.6m width, with independent control of each via a ‘novel’ user interface, as well as single rolls of wider media. Priced from €120,000 for the single row of Kyocera printheads version, the mesh kit and dual roll option may be added, and aa twin-row printhead version is also offered.

Unusually for a printer at this price point, it also offers full integration with Durst’s workflow and analytics software ‘ecosystem’, as well as being driven by Durst’s DFE, which offers preflighting as well as Ripping capabilities.

Distribution in the UK and Ireland is via Durst’s UK operation and distributor ArtSystems; Vanguard Europe has also struck deals with Netherlands-based Pixia for the Benelux region and most recently with Grup Transilvae in Romania.

Fabian Sottsas, managing director of Vanguard Europe, said, ‘Just a week after confirming Grup Transilvae’s partnership in Romania, we are preparing to share news of a new collaboration in France in the next few weeks, proving how committed we are to growing our operations quickly and efficiently. Our mission is to continue to replicate the success of our parent company, which has installed over a thousand LFP printing systems across the Americas.’

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A sister company to Full Circle Events & Exhibitions, Psycho Peacock is based in Salford, Greater Manchester and provides a service from design to installation for graphics in exhibitions, events, retail, museums, construction and visitor attractions. The investments are expected to provide up to six times the previous capacity, with the output from the previous four machines produced by the already installed and profiled P5 350.

Steve Comar, Psycho Peacock’s managing director, commented, ‘This investment gives us the scope and resources to fully deliver on our goals for both graphics and print, across our key sectors, live events, exhibitions and retail for the next three years. We can be assured due to the Durst technology, incredible quality and output metrics, that we can stand by our commitment to continually drive innovation which underpins our values and clients’ needs.’

The Tex iSub production printer is said to have opened up new business opportunities with dye sublimation for Psycho Peacock. The company said the investment in ‘cutting-edge machinery epitomising speed, quality and efficiency’ will ‘revolutionise output.’

Andrew McIntyre, general manager at Psycho Peacock, added, ‘The big thing with the Durst is that it provides the highest print quality, massive extra capacity and flexibility. Dye-sub also enables us to produce sustainable products, using fully recyclable materials, which means waste never goes to landfill. This opens up new business possibilities in a year when we are already beating our own ambitious sales targets.’

‘Delighted’ with Psycho Peacock’s investment into Durst’s technology, Peter Bray, UK and Ireland managing director of Durst Group, said, ‘Offering complete solutions from pixel to output, we continue to lead by innovation and look forward to continuing to help the team fully deliver on their goals. Our technology will help them further with their sustainability goals, commitment to excellence, streamlining logistics and moving towards greater automation.’

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The Jeti Condor RTR5200 is the latest addition to the Jeti high performance line. It is a 5.2m roll-to-roll inkjet printer, making it one of the widest in the market. Agfa claims it ‘sets the standard’ for both speed – at up to 672sqm/hr – and image quality in the roll-to-roll sector.

The Condor prints on a wide variety of flexible substrates, handling up to three rolls simultaneously. It is field-upgradable with light colours and features white and varnish inks for wider application options. The printer also features multiple media handling solutions for large and heavy rolls, and offers an ‘extensive’ range of money-, labour- and space-saving options to automate the end-to-end printing and finishing process.

On the hybrid side, the new Jeti Bronco H3300 builds on the field-tested reliability of the Tauro hardware and software. It is a 3.3m high-end UV LED inkjet printer suitable for printing a variety of sign and display jobs in six colours plus white, with an optional primer. Continuous board feeding enhances its productivity, while independent dual-roll printing allows for the simultaneous printing of differently sized rolls or media. Initially the Bronco will be available with two rows of print heads but it will be field-upgradable to a four-row version.

The latest evolution of the entry-level Anapurna range, which began life over 20 years ago, is the 3.2m hybrid Ciervo, which is pitched as a versatile printer to tackle a wide range of print jobs. The Ciervo is said to bring enhanced print quality and much higher productivity than its predecessor, offering an almost 70% increase in printing speed in production mode. It also features continuous board feeding, enabling efficient throughput of rigid materials, handling up to four boards simultaneously. 

Other members of the Agfa range now get ‘beast’ monikers, with the Onset X3 HS becoming a Grizzly, while the Tauro already had one. Agfa’s ink and industrial printing capabilities are also being highlighted at Fespa, with the decor-focused InterioJet, Alussa leather printer and high speed Inca Orca 1060 single-pass printers for the packaging market.

Arnaud Calleja, vice-president digital printing solutions at Agfa commented, ‘We are thrilled to unveil our transformed and enhanced inkjet printer portfolio, where proven wide-format inkjet technology meets the power of three brand-new beasts. Our overarching ‘powerful by nature’ portfolio theme emphasises that the performance of our printers stems from the way they have been designed. Whatever environment a printing company operates in, whatever its markets or applications, whether seeking high productivity, quality or versatility, there’s an Agfa printer that will deliver impressive results and give their business a boost.’

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This being a drupa year we’re expecting all sorts of new technologies to be presented in Düsseldorf in May. And not to be outdone, Fespa in Amsterdam is the site of a bevy of new technologies this month. Ricoh will introduce a new flatbed roll-to-roll printer and there will be many more new products to explore. There is certainly no lack of innovation, but we aren’t seeing enough being done when it comes to sustainability developments.

The problem isn’t so much with commercial print waste, since most of this is still paper based. Paper recycling is well-established in developed economies and although the paper industry is slacking when it comes to digital print deinking and recycling investments, the model is at least there. At some point the necessary upgrades will be made.

Press technologies are also readily recycled and here too a model is in place. Ricoh, Canon, HP and Xerox have long since reused skins and other components from devices they have reclaimed for reuse. And printing presses have very long lifespans, assuming parts and consumables are still available. But more seriously we have new inks and substrates that cannot always be easily parted. This compromises paper recycling and will undermine the considerable advances made in the industry’s environmental sustainability in the last few years. That said, in the commercial print sector we have an established foundation and supply chains for improved sustainability. The same cannot truly be said for the packaging sector where innovation, particularly in materials science may be spurring more problems than it solves.

In the last few years we have seen some gorgeous innovations in shapes and sizes of packaging, thanks to innovation in substrates, inks and packaging systems. There has been a trend towards smaller packages and multipacks, packages within packages which suits the market but drives excess packaging consumption. This inevitably generates waste, much of which gets burned rather than being put into established recycling streams.

According to data from the European Union (EU), each European generated an average of over 188kg of packaging waste, ranging from 73.8kg per person in Croatia to more than 246kg per person in Ireland. The EU’s goal is to recycle 70% of packaging waste by 2030, from all sources but perhaps we shouldn’t be generating so much of it in the first place. That is much easier said than done, but as with judicious use of print which is now a commonplace, we can all think more carefully about the packaging waste we generate. 

Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Miraclon, Ricoh, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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Lindsey Pearson, Whitmar Publications’ managing director, commented, ‘I’d like to thank Michael for his hard work and dedication on Digital Printer over these years. He has been responsible for taking the title to new levels, and I’m sure all our readers and partners would wish him well for the next stage in his career.

‘At the same time, I am delighted to welcome Paul to the business. He is a highly experienced publishing and editorial professional, who has successfully run his own media agency for more than a decade. I know that Paul will be a huge asset to the magazine, applying his skills and personality to represent Digital Printer and keep it at the forefront of the industry.’

Mr Sander has more than 20 years of experience in the publishing industry and since 2009 was the proprietor of Panda Media, managing a wealth of content, production and design across a range of B2B publications.

‘I look forward to taking over from where Michael has positioned the magazine, and will continue to deliver the high-quality editorial our readers have become accustomed to. Of course, with all new tenures there will be an element of cross-over, but also a fresh set of eyes and ideas. Getting out and meeting many of you is high on my agenda,’ commented Mr Sander.

You can contact Paul Sander regarding digital printing industry news, Digital Printer magazine, or the Digital Printer Awards at Paul.S@whitmar.co.uk.

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Fedrigoni reports that the transaction was finalised in late February 2024 through a NewCo incorporated by Fedrigoni to acquire Mohawk’s assets in a sale process initiated by a financial institution, following a period of significant financial distress that affected Mohawk in recent months. The transaction entirely cleared the new company from existing indebtedness, allowing it to preserve the majority of existing jobs, industrial activities and customer relationships. 

Founded in 1931, Mohawk is a family-owned company that produces well-known speciality papers for designers, brands and printers and which has ‘strongly innovated’ in the fields of digital printing and sustainability. Shared of core values ‘such as solid know-how and a focus on innovation and environmental impact reduction’ led to the acquisition of the firm, which has become part of the Fedrigoni Special Papers division and represents an important aspect of the group’s overseas growth strategy.

‘We will now be able to produce and distribute to customers a wide range of Fedrigoni high value-added papers directly in North America, and expand access to Mohawk speciality papers internationally,’ said Marco Nespolo, CEO at Fedrigoni Group.

The acquisition is Fedrigoni’s third this year, following SharpEnd in the UK and Arjowiggins China. Mr Nespolo further commented, ‘We will thus increasingly support the strategies of our customers who favour near-shoring models in place of the traditional global purchasing-oriented approach, to reduce their environmental impact and minimise the risks of supply chain disruption’.

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Ms Hodgson has joined Signbox after 14 years at Octink. During her time there, she project managed signage contracts whilst running a small team of junior project managers. She then became head of project management, looking after a team of over 20 project managers before taking on the role of general manager at the company in 2020.

Ms Hodgson commented, ‘I have known about Signbox for a long time, and I know they are a forward-thinking company with a fantastic culture for innovation and excellence in sign-making. I am also keen to get more involved in new sectors and products, there is great potential to do this with Signbox.’

Mark Bartlett, managing director of Signbox, said, ‘Hayley brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of success in the industry. She has delivered and overseen some truly incredible projects, as well as having an extensive background in account management, business strategy and senior leadership. She will play a pivotal role in taking Signbox into a new and positive era of innovation and success for our company.’

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