Heidelberg hosted its Packaging Day at Qingpu factory under the theme, ‘Infinite Possibilities-Smart Production’, in September 2019. Over a hundred visitors from all over the Asia-Pacific region attended the event at the Heidelberg Print Media Center in Shanghai, China, where they demonstrated strong interest in Heidelberg’s integrated solutions and received comprehensive answers to the growing needs in the industry where cost pressure is increasing, run lengths are constantly declining and lead-times are growing shorter all the time. Brand owners and consolidated groups are acting globally, changing the nature of printed products by increasing the variety and functionality of print, customization, versioning and personalization. Heidelberg offers its customers a wide product portfolio with comprehensive automation and integration.

“We are continuously enhancing the Smart Print Shop, and offering our customers a consistent packaging workflow with complete end-to-end box production. One of the solutions for this is our cloud-based web-to-pack platform called Boxuni that was recently launched by our customer, Xianjunlong Colour Printing, and Heidelberg. The platform connects printers, packaging designers and print buyers,” explained Thomas Frank, cluster head, Asia-Pacific, during his welcome speech.

Prinect workflow is the foundation of ‘Smart Print Shop’ and the start of the entire presentation of the day. “The packaging printers from the region were clearly impressed with Heidelberg’s fully integrated Smart Packaging workflow. Key highlights included quick-and-easy box design, impressive 3D rendering with finishing effects, carton board samples printed on the Versafire and contrasting colors to offset in addition to powerful cost savings from ganging and multicolor printing technology. And with the help of Prinect’s end-to-end workflow solutions, we are helping packaging printers produce faster, smarter and more productively than ever before,” said Brian Kow, Prinect business development manager in Asia-Pacific.

With the new configuration of the Speedmaster CD102-8+L UV, push-to- stop/navigated printing was demonstrated for the first time at the Qingpu factory. Navigated printing enables operators to make complex job changes easily with the support of automated job changes through Intelliguide Software on the Prinect Press Center XL 2 and Wallscreen. Douglas Mooney, in charge for further developing Heidelberg’s sheetfed business in Asia-Pacific said, “This time, we highlighted the flexibility of the CD102 with special applications such as in-line embossing effects, UV/drip-off coatings and multicolor schemes by producing two jobs, chocolate boxes and pharma packages.”

The Speedmaster CX 75, a true multitalent, produced two jobs showing the customer benefits in packaging printing with quick and easy job change, small footprints and user-friendly printing. The printed sheet by CX75 was color-matched to the one printed by the digital Heidelberg Versafire press in the demo. A Speedmaster SX74-4-P, a perfecting press printed one-over-one pharma package inserts.

After printing, MK’s Promatrix 106CS die-cutter processed the printed sheets of chocolate boxes to demonstrate fast job changes and high productivity. To finish the package production process, MK’s Diana Eye and Diana Go folder gluers were demonstrated.

Heidelberg Lifecycle products were also a key part of the demonstrations. Customers were given an overview of Heidelberg’s service capabilities, highlighting the global parts distribution and the worldwide biggest network of highly trained and skilled technicians. The benefits of remote service and predictive monitoring to maximize up times and ensure press reliability were explained in a very impressive manner. A wide variety of Saphira consumables are used on every job. Supporting complex conventional, UV and muliticolor jobs on paper, board and foil substrates, Saphira inks, coatings, blankets, plates and chemistry all worked together flawlessly to ensure the success of the rapid job changes and minimum waste sheets achieved during the event. Customers witnessed for themselves the perfect print quality that only Saphira products can achieve in when working together with Prinect software and Speedmaster equipment.

On the following day, the participants had the opportunity to visit an open house at the factory of MK Masterworks in Tianjin. There the visitors took a plant tour and watched the presentations of Powermatrix 106CSB included MasterSet, Powermatrix 106FC included MasterDrive, Diana Easy 85 included Diana Inspector, Digimatrix 60FC and Laser Cut 340.