KennedySmith moves to digitally printed cartons with Xeikon

Irvine, West of Scotland, folding carton producer KennedySmith Press has installed its first digital press, a Xeikon CX500, to run alongside its B1 litho printing equipment.

According to Michiel Molenaar, director of KennedySmith, a productivity analysis has highlighted the number of smaller-format jobs the company was printing multi-up on its B1 litho presses.

‘They were taking longer to make-ready than to print, meaning that they were less profitable than we would like. We decided this could be the ideal time to take a serious look at digital – the process offers virtually zero make-ready, though on a smaller format substrate,’ commented Molenaar. ‘Having examined a number of possible suppliers, Xeikon seemed to offer us the ideal solution, in terms of substrates available, colour capabilities, performance, and, of course, price.’

The introduction of the new technology been a success.

“It has been very successful, though we are certain that there is still room for more improvements from our application of the technology,’ noted Molenaar. ‘The quality is great, and, most importantly, it has been accepted by our customers. We are still learning the true potential of the Xeikon machine, and working through which jobs are the best ones to move across to digital, but we now see the technology as something suitable to work alongside litho.

‘We started printing on the Xeikon towards the end of 2023, and the re-training of our litho press operators is still on-going to a degree, but with regard to the work produced it has been very successful. The operators are still learning, of course, but if they come across an issue that they have not seen before, there is always somebody on the end of the phone for us to speak to at Xeikon.’

The company has been delighted by Xeikon's technical and operational support, even though Xeikon is still learning about packaging production.

‘We produce a lot of packaging for a Swiss company that specializes in herbal products, with the finished packs going out across the world. We used to get colour corrections from people in Australia, then more tweaks, sometimes conflicting, from somebody in Canada. With digital files going straight to press, we can simply say that you will get back what you send to us,’ added Molenaar.

Concerning the advantages of digital, the potential of producing security components on pharmaceutical packaging can cross into the area generally recognised as personalisation.

‘We are currently talking to one of our customers about adding “best before date” information to their cartons,’ said Molenaar. ‘With others, we are looking to produce numbered packs for security and integrate other security features.’

The company’s shorter runs on the Xeikon are usually about 2,500 cut sheets, but it also handles longer runs that equate to 15,000 sheets once we have cut the work from the continuous feed. Both a coating unit and a real sheeter have been added to the Xeikon print engine.

‘We are certainly not disappointed that we have made the move into digital. In most regards it has met our expectations,’ said Molenaar.

The company is currently running a single-day shift on the Xeikon. In contrast, it would typically be operating a double-day shift on both the litho presses and the finishing equipment.

‘We see ourselves moving forward to the longer working day with the digital press shortly, once we have moved more jobs in that direction. We are not like the big groups. We can be very flexible, if a customer comes to us with an urgent job, we are agile enough to be able to adjust our machine loading to accommodate such work,’ concluded Molenaar.