Educational program returns at Xeikon Café Europe

Taking place March 26-28 in Antwerp, Belgium, the Xeikon Café Europe 2019 educational program, under the title ‘Xeikon Café Academy’, will include:

• Business Talks, intended to help attendees acquire knowledge and insights on business opportunities; and
• Tech Talks, which will focus on the technical characteristics of a wide variety of end-use applications.

Each will include or be followed by a technology demonstration at one of the presses running a live, relevant end-use application based on the contents of the session.

‘Xeikon Café Academy provides a valuable learning opportunity for event attendees,’ explained Danny Mertens of Xeikon Café. ‘The goal is to provide them with practical info they can take back home to develop new business opportunities and applications that bring added value for their customers.

‘By combining the Academy sessions with an on-the-spot demo, attendees get the level of detail needed to take actionable ideas back to their businesses.’

Business Talks sessions will include: ‘Navigating through the digital opportunity’, intended for visitors considering adding digital to their labels and packaging production portfolio or looking to increase the amount of digital technology they now have; ‘Perfecting the digital and flexo match’, to help attendees decide when it is more efficient to use digital over flexo or offset, and provide insight on how digital production can improve the profitability of a conventional print business and help to acquire more customers; ‘Choosing the right print technology: drivers for success’, offering a technology-agnostic approach to choosing the most optimal technology; and ‘Next-level digital production goals: how can you reach yours?’, offering tips and tricks on how to maximize digital production.

Tech Talks will cover: ‘Unravelling the complexity of digital in-mold labels’, which is dedicated to unravelling the mystery and complexity around high-impact in-mold labels and will detail how digital production can be implemented as a complement to conventional printing; ‘When food safety and quality matters: dry toner cost and application gains’, outlining the benefits of dry toner electrophotography digital production from a technological point of view, as well as listing the specific requirements for producing labels for food, beverage, wine, spirits and pharma applications; ‘Cost and application benefits of UV inkjet’, to answer any questions about production requirements and costs of UV inkjet technology, specifically related to applications for household, industrial, durables, and health and beauty; ‘Showcase of a hybrid solution for short-run carton and label production’, looking at how digital production helps meet brand challenges to address seasonality and changing market demands; ‘Pouches, an opportunity beyond your labels’, addressing how digital production allows label printers and converters to offer a unique service and benefit from high quality, cost-effective lower volumes and shorter lead times; ‘How smooth is your operation? Get business smart with end-to-end production’, covering pre-press, print, converting and quality control for those looking to leverage digital production set-up for optimum business results; ‘Hot right now: capitalize on digital heat transfer labels that stick’, looking at opportunities in digital heat transfer decoration; ‘The role of the designer in a successful packaging and label workflow’, discussing the main pain points and technical challenges, and how to deal with them; ‘The new normal in digital color management’, on how to achieve and manage color equity across geographies and substrates; and ‘Too hot to handle? How to unleash unlimited advertising on paper cups’.

A further Tech Talks session, ‘Staying on top of new food safety regulations’, takes place only on March 27 and will provide insight on food safety aspects across all printing technologies, while providing an update of new and emerging regulations.

Mertens added: ‘Both Business Talks and Tech Talks showcase the value brought to market by close collaboration among all Xeikon Café partners, each sharing technical expertise that results in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.’

In addition to the Xeikon Café Academy educational content, the Xeikon Café Conference takes place each morning, with thought-leadership content from a variety of brands and printing professionals, including Keynote Trend Researcher Aljan De Boer, DS Smith, Continental Foods, Tough Crowd, Eurocod, Leaderform and Tapecon.