Software & Controls Q&A with Cindy Cooperman, global
director of Packaging & Brand, X-Rite Cindy Cooperman is X-Rite Pantone’s global director of sales for Packaging & Brand. She brings together companies, people and ideas to guide the relevant players in the packaging industry in adopting new technologies in practical and profitable ways
WE ARE HEARING MORE CHATTER ABOUT EXTENDED COLOUR GAMUT PRINTING. CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT THAT IS? This is also referred to as fixed colour palette printing. It uses a fixed palette of colours to achieve more Pantone colours. A common ink set used is CMYK plus orange, green and violet. In 2015, Pantone released an Extended Colour Gamut guide that translates all of the Pantone colours to ECG recipes. It would very uncommon to see more than three inks to build a colour. The benefit of this process is to provide more colour choices to brands and designers without the expense of dedicated units on press when the economics of a job do not allow for it.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF PRINTING WITH A FIXED PALETTE OF INK COLOURS? It eliminates the need to purchase and manage a large inventory of spot colours. But even more importantly, it reduces job changeover times dramatically, since the same ink set is being used throughout. The operator basically changes plates and is up and running again in a few minutes. This reduces ‘makeready time’ and waste, especially important with the demand for faster turn times and keeping costs in line. It also makes it easier to run combo jobs, making better use of expensive substrates and increasing throughput by running multiple jobs together.
THIS SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE WIDELY ADOPTED. IS IT? The technology and guidance to implement fixed colour palette printing are just really coming into
maturity. It requires plates with precise register and the ability to convert spot colours to ECG format. Most of the plate and platesetter manufacturers, especially in the flexo market, have made great strides in achieving this. A good example is Esko’s award-winning XPS Crystal technology, which not only makes plate production faster and more automated, it also delivers more precise registration. In fact, Esko announced at Labelexpo the Esko CDI Crystal 4835 imaging unit and the XPS Crystal 4835 UV exposure unit for narrow to mid-web flexo applications, including flexible packaging. These solutions not only automate the platemaking process but deliver extremely high-quality plates as well.
On the colour conversion side, even if designers
prefer to continue to specify spot colours in their designs, solutions like Esko Equinox can readily convert those spot colours to the fixed set of inks the converter chooses to use. We are seeing more adoption of fixed colour palette printing in Europe than in the U.S., but overall, interest is growing.
WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS? Barriers to adoption range from work mix to education. Converters typically understand the value of ECG but struggle to find a pragmatic approach to adopt the technique without disrupting the status quo. The other challenge is to educate their customers on how to incorporate ECG into their design and prepress workflows with appropriate expectation setting as to the final print results. ECG makes a lot of sense, especially when a
brand is seeking a broader palette of colours for versioning, variety or visual appeal. When converters take the lead on this, especially with smaller to mid-sized brands, they establish themselves as thought leaders and leading-edge providers. This increases customer retention and in the end, will significantly help both their bottom line and that of their customers.
HOW DO ESKO AND X-RITE WORK TOGETHER TO HELP CONVERTERS IN ECG IMPLEMENTATION? Since Esko, X-Rite, Pantone, VideoJet, AVT and others are all within the same Danaher family, we have been aggressively working together to ensure we can jointly work with customers to simplify and make more productive the packaging value chain, from concept to consumer. Each company has something to contribute, as the image below depicts. We believe this is an incredibly unique and strong story for the industry. No one else can offer this type of seamless workflow. Over time, our solutions will become even more
integrated, but as it stands today, there are a large number of customers in print and packaging who have already benefited from working with the Danaher companies to solve business problems, make their operations more efficient and profitable, and better serve their customers. Being able to leverage expertise across these companies is especially beneficial for converters wishing to implement ECG.
www.xrite.com
30
April 2018
www.convertermag.co.uk
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