Digital specialist in China

The Chinese Eternal group has pioneered digital printing of security labels and flexible packaging, as Kevin Liu reports

Eternal Anti-counterfeiting Technology is one of the pioneers of digital package printing in China, and in 2011 the company installed its third HP Indigo digital press.

 The Eternal Group was established in 1992 and now has six divisions in various regions and industries around China. These include Shanghai Eternal Printing, Evans Data Processing, Eternal IT, Eternal Anti-counterfeiting Technology, Shanghai Yisui Paper and Beijing Eternal Printing. Eternal is mainly active in four industries: commercial banknote printing, business forms, pressure sensitive label printing and packaging.

Compared with similar companies in China, the Eternal group started digital printing quite early. Before the establishment of Eternal Anti-counterfeiting Technology, Eternal Printing could already carry out barcode inkjet printing for customs bills using a Scitex inkjet press and Oce and Kodak digital presses.

 Eternal Anti-counterfeiting Technology was established in 2005 and it is mainly engaged in printing PS security labels and flexible packaging such as potato chips bags. The company purchased one HP Indigo WS 4050 digital press in 2005 – the first such machine installed by HP Indigo in the country – and started to provide a labels and package printing service to a wide range of demands from its customers. Key end user markets are prototyping, proofing and helping customers market and launch new food products. The WS4050 was followed by an HP Indigo WS4500 digital press in 2009 and a second machine just recently.

 ‘Digital printing helps solve some problems where traditional offset and flexo printing always failed, such as short run printing, variable data printing and personalized printing etc,’ explained the company’s director Ms Liu Wei. ‘The HP Indigo press accomplishes all the customers’ demands in a very short time so that the transportation and delivery can be finished in a short time, which assists the company in stock reduction efficiency.

‘The customers usually need samples before the conclusion of a contract and will win purchase orders as long as the samples meet their demands. By traditional technology, the cost of these samples are high. Once the machine is started, the cost of one piece is the same as that of 1,000 pieces. Digital printing solved this problem quite perfectly, with very little expense on paper and ink.’

The HP Indigo presses have been used for variable data printing, including product and security codes. The company has also made use of invisible ink readable by ultraviolet light. They are printing variable security codes with invisible ink which require a specialized decoder to read. Eternal has printed micro security text as well as digital watermarks on labels and packaging.

This branch of the company’s activity brings together all its security expertise across the group. The range of products includes anti-counterfeit and security labels for logistics and supply chain management and control. This links product packaging to secure databases via digitally printed codes that allow track and trace through the whole supply chain from raw materials, production, logistics and sales to consumers.

As well as digital security printing, the Eternal group’s Shanghai Eternal division has become one of world’s the top RFID packaging converters.

Anti-counterfeit label and packaging is provided for many of the top global 500 brands, including Canon, Johnson & Johnson and P&G, as well as leading Chinese brands.

Because of the wide range of packaging and label materials Eternal prints, it dedicates a coating machine to pre-coating HP Indigo press materials, as well as using pre-coated PS stock from Avery and Raflatac.

Flexo printing

Eternal is not limited to providing digital anti-counterfeiting packaging, but is also involved in the pharmaceutical and food label market. At the beginning of this year, Eternal installed one Gidue E-Combat M1 flexo press. ‘We introduced this machine targeting customers of pharmaceutical and food,’ says Liu Wei. ’The press has eight color units, with one rotary die cutting unit, a printing width of 370mm and average production speed is 110m/min.’

China is still overwhelmingly an offset and letterpress market, and it is very difficult to find good flexo technicians. How did Eternal solve this problem? Liu Wei explained: ‘The operation of Gidue equipment is easy, which is the key reason we chose it. Before purchasing the machine, I went to visit the plant of the manufacturer in Milan, Italy where I also tried to run it. Then I found it is highly automated and very simple for the operator’s work.

‘Our present flexo press leader is selected from our internal employees, but he has never run flexo nor traditional presses before. After simple training by Gidue, he can already operate this machine quite smartly.’

Pictured: (L-R) L&L China editor, Kevin Liu; managing director labels and packaging group, Tarsus, Roger Pellow and Liu Wei with the new HP Indigo WS4500

This article was published in L&L issue 1, 2012