Colorman improves pre-press efficiencies with Packz

Located in Broombridge, Dublin, Colorman’s printing campus covers 200,000 sqft and employs over 160 staff. With an extensive portfolio of high-end clients, the company produces a wide range of print and packaging. These include litho, digital, secure print, and gift card manufacturing, ranging from healthcare fulfillment to print enhancements.

According to Colorman, the time spent preparing files for print has been cut by up to 50 percent after investing in two floating Packz licenses, accessed across four Mac workstations. 

David Noone, pre-press manager at Colorman, commented: ‘The jump up from our existing workflow and processes has been impressive, and we are now able to run a much leaner operation. The transition to Packz has also been remarkably simple, and the software fits in well with our production workflow.’

As a native PDF editor, Packz has been developed specifically for labels and packaging with several features that eliminate repetitive tasks by introducing higher levels of automation. Version 6, released late last year, comes with a redesigned user interface that contributes to an even better user experience.       

‘The Hybrid team asked me to let them run one of our client’s jobs through the software, so we could compare like for like and really understand how many mouse clicks that could be saved,’ added Noone. ‘From there, we were able to quantify how quickly the investment would pay for itself and base our decision on that data.’

The job file testing was conducted remotely by Hybrid’s solution engineer Matt Dutch, who sent videos of the entire process back to Colorman’s pre-press team for analysis. 

‘We can demonstrate something until we’re blue in the face,’ said Paul Bates, Hybrid Software’s UK, Ireland and Global accounts manager, ‘but Matt took David’s files and ran them as if he was one of their own production guys, so they could see the real-life advantages, rather than looking at one of our pre-prepared demonstration files.’ 

Once the software was installed, the Mac operators were also trained remotely with sessions scheduled around the production shifts at Colorman to ensure a smooth and quick transition. 

‘The training was great and quite straightforward,’ said Noone. ‘Hybrid was very accommodating and flexible, and the operators were very happy. ‘Packz is a big step up from what we had in place before. There’s a lot more efficiency there, and it was obvious from day one that we could get through file preparation so much quicker.’

‘Packz has removed a bottleneck in our workflow and allowed us to free up significant amounts of time that we can now use more productively. Most importantly, it enables us to respond quickly to our customers’ needs, especially in the packaging market, where we have seen a large increase in demand during the pandemic,’ concluded Noone.