Kartongbolaget adds coating to digital investment

The digital line, the first of its type in Scandinavia, serves its customers in the industrial, food, confectionery and personal care sectors across northern Europe. It complements an existing offset workflow that includes a 6-color Heidelberg Speedmaster XL75, die-cutters and other finishing equipment.

Tresu iCoat 30000 is a flexo coating unit that applies water-based or UV varnishes in a single pass directly after the digital printing stage. Automatic chamber cleaning and fast sleeve change facilities enable varnish changeovers within 10 minutes. The integrated digital printing and flexo coating line has a maximum speed of up to 4600sph or 3450sph in four colors, and can handle substrates of maximum format 750 x 550mm in paperboard and metalized boards between 250-600 micron thickness. The press can also print on plastic substrates, accommodating PVC and polypropylene up to 630 micron, and PET up to 400 micron.

The installation has enabled Kartongbolaget to introduce a new flexible digital folding carton service, ‘Fast Track’, offering short and personalized runs of up to 5,000 sheets as well as sample production, delivered within five days. It is enabling niche and luxury brands to achieve retail listings with added-value packaging presentation for the first time, it is claimed. Further, the company is offering a number of additional services made uniquely possible by digital printing –  versioning, variable data printing for limited editions and tracing in the supply chain, personalized products, interactive packaging linked to social media competitions, and samples on-demand.  

Joakim Johansson, Kartongbolaget managing director, explained: ‘We were determined to invest in HP Indigo’s liquid toner technology because of its proven performance and versatility. It would give us the option to print board up to B2 size, and also assure us of low ink migration to meet new food legislation. When we saw at first hand the quality and performance of the HP Indigo 30000, along with the Tresu iCoat coater at the HP Graphics Experience Center in Barcelona, we knew there was no alternative.

‘The flexibility of our HP Indigo-Tresu digital line gives our customers a huge advantage in targeting consumers with more relevant products. So, one production run can be split into multiple runs with different language versions, regional variations, brand varieties and limited editions, without any extra setup times, manual input or start-up waste.

‘Above all, this digital investment gives the potential to widen our offering beyond the packaging, and provide integrated logistics solutions that remove waste from the supply chain.’