Case study – Steurs’ 360-degree approach broadens flexo

Steurs flexo prepress bureau

Steurs' Graphic Solutions, a flexo prepress provider can wait back a long way — 70 years, to 1949, when the ii Steurs brothers started what has become one of Belgium's leading packaging prepress houses. The backward await will be a short one because all optics at the Antwerp-based business are firmly stock-still on the present and the future — 'on continuing to create solutions for today and tomorrow,' every bit the company's tagline has it.

Steurs Graphic Solutions, i of the leading prepress bureau of Belgium

Those solutions take to do a lot in today's packaging market, says general manager Dirk Cantens. "We piece of work across all three processes — gravure, offset and flexo — and the full spectrum of packaging materials: metallic, plastic, folding cartons, glass, and foil. Non only are we operating in a constantly irresolute sector, simply i where every brand, printer, and converter has its own needs. Every environment is different." He adds, notwithstanding, that there are some challenges that all these players face. "To stand out, packaging has to make an impact. We call information technology 'getting to the heart' of the consumer. And the impact is a combination of things — colour, image quality and, of grade, creativity."

Dirk Cantens, general director of Steurs

R&D makes the difference in touch

Steurs offers its clients all three, positioning itself as a 360-caste service provider of prepress, premedia, and creative design. Since 2014 a further string to the Steurs bow has been the R&D section tasked with solutions development. Explains Cantens, "R&D is critical to our philosophy, which is that to be a serious prepress partner, you lot take to be able to introduce — to develop tailor-made solutions to customers' challenges. The section works closely with our sales and production managers, and is almost always at the tabular array when we're talking to brands and converters. Nosotros believe we're the but prepress supplier in our region that does this."

Then how does the approach work on a typical projection? After the initial briefing, R&D creates a projection plan to found the steps needed to develop and implement the proposed solution: custom testing on the press, followed by in-depth analysis. Next, Steurs engineers the screening and or color management solutions — branded as S-dot and South-color respectively — needed to evangelize the project and submits recommendations to the customer. After sign-off, the solutions are implemented into the workflow.

In-house creative and prepress broaden flexo's appeal

S-dot was among the kickoff products of Steurs' R&D investment and illustrated the thinking backside the conclusion to fix upward the section. The initial objective, Cantens explains, was to broaden the appeal of flexo to brands and converters. "It's accepted that flexo has advantages over offset and gravure — lower cost, greater flexibility every bit regards substrates, and shorter lead times — and these are all important to brands and their printers. Merely in the by, doubts virtually print quality and consistency outweighed them — things like lower densities and flexo edges.

"That changed when Flexcel NX arrived on the scene, and in the concluding decade, flexo has come on leaps and premises. So we decided to make NX the platform for a new strategy to promote flexo equally an alternative to the other processes, and made it a priority for R&D to develop solutions for high-quality flexo to increase its quality and stability."

He describes S-dot as a group of screening technologies that Steurs applies to Flexcel NX to control ink transfer and dot gain either locally — in specific epitome areas — or beyond the plate. "This ways we can print variable densities of the same color on the aforementioned plate, reproducing college densities for solid colors while reducing dot proceeds in screened areas. At that place's no edge on barcodes, and text is sharper. Any the substrate, nosotros tin can guarantee these results. Today, more and more brands are convinced of flexo's benefits, quality concerns have faded, and they're willing to consider moving products across."

"Nosotros simply show them"

Asked how Steurs makes a case for flexo to brands and converters, Cantens' reply is curtailed, "We only bear witness them. We take an increasing number of successful projects in our portfolio, and these show what'southward possible — the faster time-to-marketplace, the lower costs, and so on."

Steurs won a gilded honour at the inaugural Kodak Global Flexo Innovations Honor

Steurs tin too evidence prospective customers an expanding awards cabinet, home to a Benelux Packaging Innovation Award (for S-dot), and a gold award in 2018's countdown Kodak Global Flexo Innovation Awards. The entry, printed CMYK on high-compress PET-G material, was a articulation projection between Steurs and printer Helios Packaging, with whom Steurs has worked since 2022. The human relationship came nigh when Helios — predominantly a gravure producer of shrink sleeves — decided to focus 100% on flexo.

This radical change in strategy was driven by iii new customer requirements: shorter lead-times, shorter runs, and greater cost-efficiency. "It was a bold decision by Helios," says Cantens, "but one based on a clear agreement of how the market is changing, specially the retail sector where nigh of Helios' business is. It was made with eyes on the futurity." Approaching Steurs was a natural side by side motion, and the last three years have seen steady progress in testing and fine-tuning new S-dot technology, including extending its application to shrink-foil.

The event is a growing number of brands looking seriously at flexo as an alternative to gravure and offset. "We don't need to sell aggressively," says Cantens. "Usually, the samples speak for themselves, and all that the brands ask of us is that the flexo consequence is equal to, or better than, gravure and that the design doesn't have to change." He acknowledges that there remains a lingering perception that quality is an issue, but says it's fading with every successful gravure-to-flexo conversion. "Each day, we're proving the opposite."

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