How many companies are able to claim that nine out of ten major brands packaging is made by their customers?
The answer may only be one – Esko, the global provider of integrated software and hardware solutions that accelerate the go-to-market process of packaged goods. Esko, a graphic arts firm, produces pre-press software and equipment for labels and packaging.
Packaging management platform designed to help brand marketing and packaging teams increase productivity, reduce cost, and save time.
Esko solutions help each stakeholder work efficiently to deliver packaging and marketing materials on time and with the right content.
Jan De Roeck, marketing, packaging, printing manager, Esko, said: “Our goal is to make it easier for consumer packaged goods (CPG) and pharma businesses to manage their packaging, labelling, regulatory and marketing content.”
It is aimed at answering questions such as: Can Esko predict how much work will be required to print a package when a brand orders a design? Can Esko combine available data around materials, processes and bring it all together to be able to accurately predict?
Trends
Esko stated that its relationship with partners and customers informs its ability to identify and respond to specific market trends.
The market is under constant pressure, as resource costs are increasing (materials, electricity, staff), and there is a shortage of skills.
De Roeck said: “With colour accuracy and consistency being key concerns for brands – and therefore to our customers – the ability to deliver accurate colour, regardless of run length or substrate, is of paramount importance to today’s packaging converters. With quality non-negotiable, this tool allows an operator to verify if a package or label design can be printed more efficiently without compromising colour accuracy.”
Esko recently launched Color Preflight for ArtPro+, which builds upon already present colour management deployments, using existing colour profiles – designed to verify without expensive, time consuming test prints. No such tool existed before its introduction.
De Roeck said: “Color Preflight puts power in the hands of operators, freeing up valuable time for additional work – 25%-30% more productivity.”
He said viewing PDF files in the packaging design and print process can be cumbersome between departments: “Depending on what viewing technology you use to view a PDF you can render this something different to someone else using another tool. Converting companies are now under pressure to produce faster and with the same high quality. They also have a lot more brands. They have big brands and also a long tail of smaller brands – the Instagram brands. The end result is thousands of iterations, annotations and emails.
“We have just announced a facility within our applications which allows to share an asset to a clients native cloud – called Share and Approve – the recipient will receive an email with a link, and will not have to install anything, just click on that link, allowing to view accurately and annotate, and approve. Everyone is guaranteed to look at the same data in exactly the same way”
What has digital printing done to the CPG market?
De Roeck stated that there are material savings, right-sizing, pack size for shelf, but also better delivery journeys in the supply chain.
“Brands and converters latched on to this a long time ago but it really is a surging trend now.”
He said that he sees a trend towards more jobs of shorter durations. There is also a need to automate, as it’s obvious that automation is the only viable way to maintain margins and produce at a cost-effective level.
He also said that cloud-based storage and use is becoming an increasingly important part of the design and print processes for packaging.
“As much as people say they don’t trust the cloud, people get hacked everyday. We take on that challenge and there is a big organisation behind it to ensure we have these certifications.”
John Edison, CEO of Esko, explains the importance of data models in the industry and the sharing of information.
He said when a brand is envisaging design of their packaging – the prediction of the carbon footprint of the packaging has to be looked at around the data available on the market regarding the different materials that could be used.
“There is no one player that will solve the entire equation here. The industry will lead us to interoperability. Banks, for example, never shared data before regulators said that you had to share them in order to detect cross-border fraud. Any sector that can earn money or suffer a loss will be more open to sharing. We’re starting to have conversations about our key partnerships. From where will that initial alignment for delivering the initial value to customers come?
De Roeck stated that the US industry is now taking sustainability much more seriously. Consumers have awareness of the necessity of separating waste; this was lagging behind in US compared to Europe, but that’s catching up now and as a consequence there is more focus in
businesses.
“We and our customers are holding ourselves to a much higher standard – its not just talk anymore its action. We’ve seen many of our largest customers adopting these higher standards. Or building their standards internally to match. It’s a really positive trend.”
The Ukraine war has had a significant impact on the sector. Price and regulations generally start in the EU – but not so in the US.
“We don’t see the effect of the war so much here [in the US], it is more about economic uncertainty,” explained Edison. “We are seeing capital spend open a little in Europe but in the US they are really conservative. But there is a greater appetite to experiment a bit more in the US market like AI.”
Esko stated that the company was doing well in general, and the industry is consolidating. “It’s a number one priority to always increase market share – also the case in UK and western Europe which are huge markets for us and opportunity to pretty much double down.”
Progression and challenges
Edison said omni-channel is moving at a much faster pace: “It’s a tough nut to crack across the board for all – brands, suppliers, and us. We are going to be making some careful bets there – closer to our core around content, information we manage, for a workflow that delivers digital and physical. That’s the
holy grail.”
Digitsation and the pace of digitisation is going to be key in the packaging space moving forward – pure automation on its own has been passed now.
“The future is going to be intelligent operations – optimising and predicting. Can you make changes to your press without having to stop it? Can changes be made without stopping the operation?”
He warned that sustainability is probably the most cloudy element; “Everyone wants to move the needle there – brands want to appeal to the generation of buyers of their products as a responsible brand. The standards are what will drive what actually happens – it will be interesting to watch EU regulators.”