Package printer improving gravure results with QuadTech

Cartotecnica Veneta produces finished and semi-finished flexible packaging and folding cartons primarily for large Italian and European food and beverage brands including Ferrero, Nestlé Italy and Unilever.

The company's substrate portfolio – ranging from coated and uncoated paper and board, to aluminum foil and thin PP and PE films – requires different ink sets, discrete color targets and precisely imaged gravure cylinders.

The QuadTech integrated Color Quality Solution relays in-line spectral data gathered by QuadTech's SpectralCam to ink formulation software from X-Rite and ink technology from hubergroup to ensure a consistent color measurement standard from the brand owner's request to last printed image.

The QuadTech Color Measurement System with SpectralCam is positioned after the last printing unit on Cartotecnica Veneta's gravure line. Once the press is running, SpectralCam measures the multiple pre-defined color targets throughout the print run to ensure accurate, repeatable color quality. The system receives the color targets, ink quantities, viscosity, substrate, run length, and other parameters utilizing the QuadTech Color Quality Solution and ICON platform.

With hubergroup ink, Cartotecnica Veneta can use just one set of color base inks for varying substrates instead of multiple ink gravure series, while the X-Rite Ink Formulation software pin-points customer-defined color targets to form a spectral color curve and then checks existing stocks availability for any matching return ink before formulating an ink recipe.

The system installation was managed by QuadTech's agent ColorConsulting and supported by a QuadTech team from the US.

Before the installation of the automated system, achieving the standards of accuracy required was time-consuming and expensive. It is also allowing Cartotecnica Veneta to attract new business after impressing representatives from Nestlé Italy after they were shown a live make-ready on its problematic multi-layered substrate for its Buitoni range. That substrate includes plastic film on one side and an aluminum foil on the other, with the Cartotecnica Veneta QuadTech system achieving accurate repeat prints in minutes.

Francesco Meneghetti, president of Cartotecnica Veneta, said: ‘Before QuadTech's Color Quality Solution, the production of gravure inks was manual, labor-intensive and wasteful.

‘Our vast substrate portfolio has always a challenge as it requires different ink sets, unique color targets and accurately made gravure cylinders. Therefore, excess ink was a frequent occurrence but now ink storage space has now been reduced from two rooms to a fifth of one room.’

‘We have also eliminated unpredictable manual intervention, he added. ‘Our operators find the QuadTech solution very easy and so accurate to use that they want to work with the system every day, for every job.

‘Set-up is simple and once the color is on the press it decreases make-ready time because the system knows exactly what to expect from any ink, cylinder and substrate combination and can rectify anything within minutes.’