He too quickly saw the potential of FLEXCEL NX Technology “to take our flexo production to another level. One such customer was Sada, where Gerardo Budetti and his R&D team had a directive to identify innovative new technologies. It was immediately clear to me that FLEXCEL NX Plates was the solution, so we set out to explore its potential, working with some of our longstanding converter customers.” “We were looking for a way to overcome what, at the time, we saw as critical issues holding back quality flexo printing on corrugated - in particular, poor ink coverage – especially when printing with water-based inks – and the difficulty of achieving clean colors in the highlights. Bruno Amadio explains how the investment came about: Sada was already familiar with FLEXCEL NX Technology from Miraclon, having been introduced to it in 2015 when Tadam commissioned its FLEXCEL NX System. This led to the decision to explore flexo post-print, using Sada’s Goepfert flexo press that has integrated die-cutting, and the KODAK FLEXCEL NXC Plates supplied by Tadam. It also took 20 days to produce 20,000 cartons, across two production sites and three production lines. Until recently, the traditional litho preprint and lamination route had been taken through a different packaging producer, but this was becoming increasingly impractical because of the high costs and the longer, more complex production process. Barilla sets the bar highīecause Mulino Bianco is one of Barilla’s premium brands, the quality bar is set high. The company has seven operations in Italy, as well as commercial ventures with other businesses, in Italy and Europe. Sada produces corrugated and folding cardboard using flexo and offset, and has a similar focus on food packaging, which accounts for 80% of production. Tadam specializes in corrugated packaging, mostly for the food sector, which represents 80% of the business. Tadam and Sada have worked together since 2015, bringing their respective expertise in prepress and printing to bear on numerous corrugated projects. And when you add in the outstanding and predictable quality possible with the KODAK FLEXCEL NX System, you’re offering a precious advantage to print buyers.” GFIA judge Stefano d’Andrea picked up on this when he commented that this entry “demonstrated what are becoming the expected benefits of lower cost of production and faster time-to-market. Combine this with the ever-present pressure to produce faster and at a lower cost, and the arguments for flexo post-print become even more compelling. Brands and retailers moved to direct-to-shelf packaging a while ago, but with the explosive growth in e-commerce, further accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, secondary packaging has to carry clear messages into the home. Corrugated’s changing roleĪs with other GFIA entries, the Tadam/Sada submission reveals a lot about drivers at work in the corrugated sector that are changing the role of secondary packaging. By migrating the job from litho preprint to flexo post-print with FLEXCEL NX Plates, the lead time could be reduced by 70% and the production time slashed from 20 days to 6 hours, resulting in a 35% cost reduction. Its joint entry with converter customer Gruppo Sada collected a Silver Award for the production workflow behind a litho to flexo process conversion for premium food brand, Barilla. This underscores the production and quality benefits we and our customers have enjoyed with FLEXCEL NX Technology to date.” He also adds that “since the acquisition of Tadam by the largest prepress service provider in Italy, Inci-Flex has replicated Tadam’s production line with a FLEXCEL NX System investment for their production site in Concorezzo, Lombardy. But now, more and more brands are demanding complex, multi-color graphics, whatever the substrate - which is good news for flexo post-print, not so much for litho preprint.”īruno Amadio, previously owner of Tadam and now plant manager at Inci-Flex since his company was acquired by them in late 2021, is reflecting on the Maltignano-based company’s success in the Miraclon-sponsored Global Flexo Innovation Awards (GFIA). “High print quality has been a given in flexible packaging for years, but that hasn’t been the case in corrugated, where product protection has mattered more than brand promotion.
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