Essel Group standardizes pre-press workflow globally with Esko

Several years ago, the company adopted Esko's pre-press and workflow technology across its plants in India. The goal was to manage consistency in brand colors for multinational clients.

M Ram Ramasamy, chief operating officer of Essel Propack, commented: ‘The Essel Group is a frontrunner when it comes to standardizing color for global brands. With Esko, we can achieve uniform print quality across various printing processes such as offset, digital, flexo and letterpress. Before our recent contract signing at drupa 2016, our earlier agreement with Esko helped us to standardize the pre-press workflow across all four plants in India (Vasind, Wada, Nalagarh and Goa) and in Poland, Germany and China – seven plants so far.’

The new agreement will see Essel equip all of its major plants, located at 14 sites globally, with Esko’s pre-press, design and packaging management products. Full HD Flexo digital imagers will be set up within 18 months across all the plants. The company is taking every possible step to detect and fix errors at the initial stages of the workflow, and to automate its processes in order to enhance quality, productivity, security and time to market for its brand owner customers.

Speaking about the benefits of standardization, Ramasamy said: ‘The relationship of Esko and Essel Propack started 15 years ago. Since then, Esko’s solutions have helped us in maintaining quality and efficiency in reproducing brand colors to meet the local and internal customers demand. We want to achieve the highest quality and efficiency by using more or less the same software tools and equipment across all plants. That’s how standardization comes into the picture.’

With Esko’s design, pre-press and workflow software, and its prototyping and collaborative online tools, Essel Propack can link its existing pre-press units to various manufacturing units. As part of the agreement, there will be standard tools across the globe.

 ‘In the last few years, with the increase in consumption of tubes, Essel Group has expanded its footprint every year,’ added Ramasamy. ‘Hence, automation becomes a necessity to be able to produce more files while reducing the time in supply chain management. Clients are involved from the development stage in visualizing the final output. This way consumer product can reach the market as quickly as possible.’

The Essel Group’s research and development team continues to secure patents in laminated tube design and production.

John Winderam, general manager of Esko, said: ‘Esko is very pleased to have strengthened our relationship with Essel Propack. When two leading industry players choose to work together at this level then you can expect great results. We expect our partnership to set a new standard in the design and production of the next generation of laminated tubes.’