Customized packaging is a trend

Flexicon is known for flexibility. In times of increasing cost pressure and customer requirements, flexibility is the crucial key to cost-efficient and well-selling, customized brand packaging. Digital printing offers a huge potential of opportunities. The credo of Flexicons new service is thus: ”increased variants, smaller print quantities“: Consulting and product management in digital printing for flexible packaging.

50.000 different versions of labels

Unlimitedly customizable print motifs in certain quantities: What’s hardly or not feasible at all by gravure printing or drives cost upwards exorbitantly, works excellently with an experienced prepress provider and the right digital printing method. Provided throughout the project: top advice and first-class product management. In cooperation with Flexicon, Danone smoothly conducted a promotion for the brand Actimel on the French market with 50.000 label motifs in highest print quality. Before the project started, the focus was on consulting services by Flexicon. The technical challenges were discussed during a workshop. For the technical realisation the decision was made in favour of HP Indigo digital printing machines. This technology allows for a combination of an infinite number of different image contents, texts and backgrounds. The key benefit: digital printing does not require classic repro. It is rather about the flexible data management. During the Danone Actimel project, the Flexicon experts put emphasis on risk management. When combining the elements arbitrarily, there’s a risk that the claim might be ambiguous. Also, the logo had to be similar to existing products in every label variant in digital printing on another kind of carrier. A real challenge, since the labels consist of shrink film which additionally changes the motif in perspective. Colour and project management of a campaign with such high demands and of this scale are often underestimated. Leaving nothing to chance, Flexicon as an interface between creation and production took over colour management completely for Danone‘s lead agency. Within the frameworks of data management, Flexicon built simplified templates for the release by the customer and prepared fingerprints as well as colour profiles for the digital printing machine to ensure the expected printing results. The number of variants, the narrow time frame and the high technical standard placed the highest demands on project management by Flexicon.

Perfect Workflows for customized packaging

Many medium-sized companies and smaller brand manufacturers see the necessity to render their packaging more customer friendly and to roll them out in even shorter cycles as part of promotions. Together with an experienced provider like Flexicon, these companies can also benefit easily from the trend of customized packaging. Flexicon puts the focus of their new service on project management, flexible data management and colour management. This guarantees a successful integration of digital print projects into traditional D2P-workflows while maintaining the highest FMOT effect and highest colour consistency. At the same time, Flexicon’s digital printing experts coordinate directly with machine suppliers, creative agencies and printing companies in order to establish an optimal workflow. It might also be a good solution to entrust Flexicon with ripping the data. Thus, the data flow of several thousand motifs can be coordinated worldwide.