Cutting Systems
The digital difference D
uring the Covid-19 Pandemic, ecommerce has seen a huge rise and not just for consumers. Converters and brands are also coming to terms with new ways of doing business, not least through creating dedicated web-to-pack websites. These sites are offering products that help companies, including small and medium businesses, to quickly obtain the branded packaging materials there are uniquely customized to their needs.
Take for example, Digital Room in the USA which has built its business around the concept of offering customers nearly endless product customisation possibilities through a portfolio of e-commerce web sites including UPrinting, Packola and LogoSportswear. It is doing this by leveraging the latest manufacturing and e-commerce technologies, including Highcon Euclid IIIC and Highcon Beam 2 digital cutting and creasing machines.
Chase Cairncross, chief operating officer at Digital Room, claims: “With the constant increase in e-commerce, customers want to be able to decide the shape, size, color and quantity of the items they need – they do not want to be limited to what they are told they can have.” Heuchemer Verpackungen in Germany is doing something similar with its Highcon Euclid IIIC at
LAMAXSO.com, its digital packaging platform for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and local manufacturers.
LAMAXSO.com offers customers packaging design templates and a portfolio of customised shipping boxes, bottle packaging, folding boxes, gift boxes, product trays, decorations and more.
The demand for rapid turnaround and shorter runs as well as design and production flexibility, were all present even before the effects of the pandemic. However, since the onset of the pandemic, they have become more important than ever. In addition, there is more pressure to maximise operational efficiency and to overcome supply chain shortages. Today, to streamline and optimise production, successful converters are selecting the right tool for the job. They are running conventional and digital manufacturing approaches in parallel. In digital manufacturing, the workflow, production platforms – printing and finishing, MOQs and lead times can be different.
Simon Lewis.
A fully implemented digital manufacturing strategy will aggressively gang different jobs on a single sheet, reducing the number of setups and ensuring a healthy setup time – production time ratio. Jobs will be finished digitally without mechanical dies, saving time and money. The benefits of digital finishing are clear and answer many of the challenges facing both folding carton and corrugated converters around the world – rapid turnaround of jobs, elimination of tooling costs, profitable shorter runs, and immediate error correction and/or changes according to designer or customer requirements. Highcon’s digital cutting and digitally-driven mechanical creasing bring all the advantages of digital to the post-print part of the packaging manufacturing process. Highcon combines a laser cutting system with its proprietary DART technology for digitally driven physical creasing via 3D printed rules.
In addition, the stripping system separates the small pieces of board into the waste disposal. Creasing, cutting and stripping are performed on one single platform, in one pass, at high speed, thus eliminating the need for the die cutting and stripping tools required in the conventional
analogue processes. Highcon’s portfolio includes two product families, each with specific models for folding carton and corrugated board: the Euclid platform for shorter runs and the Beam platform for medium to longer runs. Covid-19 and the huge rise of e-commerce around the globe are significant catalysts for more packaging but also highlight the benefit of digital technologies in providing response during times of uncertainty and reduced budgets; frustration-free packaging, rightsizing and dual-purpose packaging are just some of the consumer requirements.
Highcon’s solutions are also about agility and reducing carbon footprint by eliminating the wood, metal and rubber components needed to produce the die as well as all the logistics, the warehouses required to store the conventional dies and the inventory obsolescence that goes with on-demand delivery rather than on-demand production. Thus, it is becoming increasingly agile in the packaging context, supporting digital storage, simpler supply chains and sustainability.
Xwww.highcon.net
Simon Lewis, vice president of marketing at Highcon explains how digital finishing is becoming increasingly agile in the packaging sector.
20
November 2021
www.convertermag.com
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