Web to Pack: Packaging Goes Digital

Heidelberg’s Primefire 106 has been undergoing field testing at colordruck Baiersbronn, a European package printer, since the beginning of the year.
 
“We see ourselves as a packaging service provider and offer our customers the three business areas: Packaging production, packaging service and packaging digital,” said Thomas Pfefferle, one of the two managing directors at colordruck Baiersbronn.

The Packaging Service business area has its own packaging machines, which are used, for example, to fill Advent calendars with chocolate.

“We mainly use the Primefire 106 for the following applications: short runs up to approximately 1,500 sheets, orders that are received via [our] webshop, and customized runs involving variable data,” said Martin Bruttel, the other managing director.

Web to pack is already used by many of colordruck Baiersbronn’s customers.
 
However, web to pack is more than “just” an online shop where folding cartons are offered via the Internet. It is a basic philosophy for making your business and the entire workflow organization fit for the future in the age of Print 4.0.

Web to pack is a shift away from the individual production of an order and towards custom large-scale production using standardization and automation.

The print shop offers, for example, a limited choice of carton formats, spot colors and embellishments. The customer configures his or her product online and can upload his or her own images, while the print shop gets a standardized order which it can produce in gang runs and without changeovers. The advantages for the print shop: No stockpiles and fewer manual interventions mean fewer errors and costs, and therefore greater speed and flexibility.

The web shop, part of the Packaging Digital business area, is integrated with elements such as an editor for personalized inputs, design wizards, 3D preview, automatic data checking, the payment system, and delivery.

“Here we produce mock-ups, smallest batches for trade fair activities and for marketing campaigns in quantities ranging from 1 to 1,000, or proofs for brand producers with different variants,” Bruttel said. “With web to pack, we have already produced high-quality packaging for the Japanese market, for example. The customer was impressed as the color stability is identical from the first to the last sheet, and the color consistency is outstanding – in other words, it has the proverbial Japanese quality.”

Other advantages include the fact that the inks and consumables are safe for use in the food sector, as well as minimal paper waste.

In its offset printing arm, colordruck continues to produce premium packaging using four highly automated Speedmaster machines from the latest generation.

“The direction of movement is clear: analog production is increasingly being automated and processed with Industry 4.0 and in the workflow,” Pfefferle said. “With the highly-automated machines of Heidelberg – both in offset and digital printing – we have a high-performance system landscape and can flexibly decide with which technology we can produce an order most economically.”