Comexi Offset CI8 claims environmental innovation award

The European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a management tool for organizations aiming to improve their environmental and financial performance and communicate their environmental achievements. In 2005 the European Commission introduced the EMAS Awards to recognize examples of excellence in environmental management among the wide range of registered organizations. 

The theme of the 2015 awards was ‘Effective eco-innovations supporting improvements in environmental performance’, with 22 organizations from nine European countries nominated across six categories.

Comexi was named as the winning large organization in the private sector with its Offset CI8 press technology, which fully eliminates the use of solvent-based inks in the printing process so removing the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It also consumes 40 percent  less energy.

The European Commission said Comexi could ‘transform the entire printing sector’ with the technology, especially as it has ‘an outstanding level of engagement with others in the supply chain’.

The Comexi Offset CI8 press, launched in 2012, has been specially designed for printing on elastic materials, and responds to the main challenges faced in the flexible packaging printing sector of reducing environmental impact, increasing energy efficiency, achieving high print quality and delivering production flexibility.

Comexi is currently commissioning the first Offset CI8 units in Spain, Austria, Middle East, France, Poland and China, and said it plans to increase, ‘in a significant way from 2016 onwards’, the market presence of the press due to the high interest in the technology.

Comexi president Manel Xifra collected the award during the 18th European Forum on Eco-Innovation that took place recently in Barcelona, and said: ‘We are thrilled to receive this award. It is a great recognition for the company’s crucial commitment to incorporate innovation to our objectives in order to transform the flexible packaging sector in a sustainable industry.’

Other winners in the 2015 EMAS Awards included Seehotel Wiesler, a nature and wellness hotel on Lake Titisee in the southern Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg which has developed a model for eco-tourism that has motivated 32 other hotels (plus a further 12 due this year) to join EMAS, and Metallbau Haslinger, which produces steel constructions and overhead cranes, and is moving towards becoming a carbon-neutral operation, despite its energy-intensive processes. This includes generating heat for space heating and powder coating from wood chips, sourcing electricity used in fabrication from solar energy, and using electric vehicles for part of its transport activities.