The privately owned British engineering group, Langley Holdings plc, has emerged as the investor behind the takeover of the sheet fed printing equipment division, its production facilities (including all real estate in Offenbach), together with the international marketing organization in more than 40 countries. 

„I am very pleased with the solution which will provide a long-term perspective to the Offenbach location and the sheet fed printing business”, said Werner Schneider, Insolvency Administrator. Roughly 840 future employees in Offenbach will be taken over according to the present staff planning. In addition, Langley takes over the international marketing organization.

„ Tony Langley, sole shareholder of the Langley Group, is well known as a long term investor who acts strategically. We are convinced that a lasting perspective has been found for manroland’s sheet fed printing business“, Schneider continues.

 „We foresee very good economic prospects for manroland sheetfed following the recent re-structuring…” said Tony Langley, “…this is a world-class business with an ...

Bella Italia has become even more beautiful – in particular, this applies to two northern Italian printing houses. This is where new manroland sheetfed presses took up operation. Grafiche Antiga now uses a ROLAND 700 DirectDrive, while Print Duemila installed a ROLAND 900. The new printing systems allow these customers to expand their production capacities.

Located roughly 50 kilometers northwest of Venice, Grafiche Antiga is one of northern Italy’s most prominent graphic arts industry operations. To increase its capacities, the printing house invested for the third time in a ROLAND 700, this time in an eight-color perfector press of the DirectDrive generation. It replaces a competitor’s press. To remain internationally competitive, Grafiche Antiga offers its customers a wide range of products that are entirely produced in-house. For its more than 1000 customers, Grafiche Antiga processes 6,500 tons of paper in approximately 10,000 print jobs annually, producing advertising and publication print products as well as packaging.

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The VAPack initiative highlights the opportunities and benefits of ‘value added’ packaging techniques & materials. Focused on creative packaging professionals, it broadens understanding about such differentiation methods.

EskoArtwork is the worldwide market leader with software for artwork creation, pre-production, automation, quality assurance and collaboration targeted at brand owners, retailers, designers and packaging manufacturers.

EskoArtwork will contribute its Studio product family knowhow, to show how the Value Added Packaging techniques & materials from the VAPack project can be modelled and assessed in 3D before prototyping or manufacture. Such technology can significantly reduce ‘time to market’ for new product launches. The EskoArtwork Studio capability includes Studio Designer, Studio Toolkit for Boxes, Studio Visualizer and Esko Store Visualizer. For more information see www.esko.com/en/Products/overview/studio/overview    

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PrintCity Alliance members manroland, Sun Chemical, UPM, Cofely, M-real and Sappi presented their shared process knowledge across sheetfed printing & packaging in a well attended seminar organised with GIPP, the Guild of Press Publishers, in Moscow on November 17.

Highlights of the Seminar

Around 100 Russian delegates attended the event at the Holiday Inn Hotel Lesnaya to hear a series of presentations by PrintCity members on the subject Adding Value to Sheetfed and Packaging Printing Applications. John Dangelmaier, President of PrintCity, together with Mikhail A. Kuvshinov from HGS moderated the event, which saw in depth discussions on a range of topics.

Seminar Attendee Feedback

The audience feedback was very positive about this latest PrintCity Alliance Moscow event:

• Denis Strunnikov, ANTALIS Company, "It was all very well organized and more than relevant. A lot of aspects affect production efficiency. All the speakers communicated their messages to the audience clearly and competently. It was fascinating".
• Alexander Maximov, Z-Production, "Thank you for the ...
  

The printing and packaging industry is constantly searching on new finishing processes, materials and effects. Such a new process presents WEILBURGER Graphics GmbH located in the franconian Gerhardshofen together with Merck KGaA and Model Kramp GmbH under the designation Chip Off effect coating.

The chip off effect coating is a two component finishing which can be applied by a printing press with one coating unit with UV drying.

This innovative effect is based on different surface tensions of the two lacquers and generates an optical and haptical 3D structure. This inhomogeneous structure can be mostly described as “dryed foam” in case of full-surface application of both lacquers. By varying the both lacquer types you will get effects, which are reminiscent of surface structures of oxidized metals, polystyrenes or rubber foam. By adding effect pigments you can increase the effect optically. What is special about the application of introduced pigments is the strong generated edge formation in the supreme lacquer by tearing-off the coating surface in the seco ...

Executive Board member Dr. Markus Rall, responsible for the business sectors Sheetfed Printing Systems and Production at manroland AG, is to leave the company of his own accord in October 2011 to seek new career challenges. His duties will be taken over by CEO Gerd Finkbeiner.

Dr. Markus Rall joined manroland AG in 1995 and was appointed to the Executive Board in 2005. Under his leadership, in recent years the sheetfed sector successfully implemented the necessary restructuring measures. “We regret the departure of Dr. Rall and expressly thank him for his commitment and excellent cooperation over many years,” says Hanno Fiedler, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of manroland AG. Chief Executive Officer Gerd Finkbeiner adds: “I also wish to thank Dr. Rall personally and on behalf of my Executive Board colleagues for the trustworthy cooperation and wish him all the very best for the future.”

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PrintCity Alliance Value Added Packaging (VAPack) members manroland, UPM, Sun Chemical, M-real, Kurz, Merck and Weilburger Graphics, plus main project partner Bobst, have been joined by new members and partners following the successful worldwide launch of the project at Interpack in May.

VAPack offers brand owners, designers and packaging specialists a ‘value added’ knowledge base plus creative sample boxes to show new possibilities.

New VAPack Members & Partners

The line-up of VAPack Members and Technology Partners has now grown significantly to provide new samples for the Creative Pack this summer. In addition to the original VAPack technology partners Reproflex and UpCode, the project welcomes these new contributors of know-how and technologies for 2011/2012:

• Eltosch – UV technology
• Hammesfahr – High quality printers
• Heiber + Schröder – Innovative window patching
• H + M – Hot stamping tools
• Köch & Glasder – Value added packaging finishing
• Marbach – Cutting dies
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BSE, dioxin or EHEC: Foodstuff scandals alarm and unnerve consumers. More and more they not only ask “what is in our food?” but also “what is around our food?”, talking about the packaging.

Without suitable packaging food cannot be stored, distributed or sold. Regardless of the packaging used, it must not impair the contents and have an adverse effect on color, effect, taste, odor, shelf life, or other characteristics. The substrate is important, whether it be foil, plastic, paper or carton. Printed packaging on the average consists of more than 97 percent substrate, and around 0.5 percent printing ink and up to 1.5 percent coating. What are the risks when packaging components are unsuitable for the contents? Which materials are suitable for which contents? What can cause unrequested contamination? Vital questions for packaging printing.

Undesirable ingredients
Paper and carton are receptive to volatile substances in the ambient air. They absorb fluids as well as vapors from washing agents or conventional inks in the pressroom. Ecological considerations often lead to recycled waste paper being used for packaging but thi ...

The future for packaging printing is brighter than ever, but printers can only succeed if they refuse to be boxed in. The on-the-go lifestyle of today’s work-force is driving up consumption and making packaging printing even more indispensable, but a forward-looking approach is needed if printers want to profit from it.

When economies grow, people will buy more products, they will shop more. More supermarkets and other shops will emerge. In these shops and supermarkets, you cannot just throw all the products you sell on a pile or hang on a hook. You need to put it on a shelf. You need to display it nicely so that people notice your product and will actually buy. This means: Boxes are needed. Boxes need to be printed and printed well. Satisfying this huge demand may look easy at first glance. However, not every printer has the ability to meet the high quality standards set by the customers. The trend for shorter print runs resulting from retailers having little room to keep stock of products, and additional packaging security measures to protect customers’ brands from imitations add to the challenges that printers face. Complicating matter is th ...