Juergen Freier, VP Sales, and General Manager, Highcon Europe will be presenting as part of the FuturePrint Sessions at the CCE Show in Munich on 15 March. In advance, of this, we thought we would ask him a few questions to introduce him to the FuturePrint community ahead of next month’s event.

Juergen, tell us about your back story and how you arrived at Highcon?

Throughout my career, I have worked in leadership positions in both the production side at companies including Bertelsmann and the vendor side at Heidelberg, Polar and others. Until late 2019, I served in senior European sales leadership roles within HP’s Graphics Solutions Business, leading Indigo and Pagewide Web Press in France, then Germany, and then managing the growth of the whole of EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa).

At the beginning of the pandemic, I created my own consulting company to help printing companies and vendors manage the challenge. One of my consulting projects was with Highcon in France. Then an exciting role in EMEA at Highcon came available and because of the great relationship I already had, I moved! Having worked in the cutting and digital industries, it was obvious for me to finally work in digital cutting!

What do you think is the biggest challenge and opportunity for print?

I think the biggest challenge is the need for us all to change. We must challenge ourselves to always question why we do things a certain way. What has worked in the past may not be right in the future! One must constantly adapt to fast-changing conditions. Some people move early and have made a good business out of adapting quickly to change, but most businesses move slower, thinking it is less risky, and then they end up simply competing over prices. This is damaging as it destroys value, and sadly this has been a constant problem in the print industry.

Differentiation is a keyword that unfortunately very few people embrace. As an entire sector, we need to be more consultative and connect with our customers on a far higher level. To get things done we need strong customer relations and high value add. There are a lot of opportunities but not everybody has the right mindset to do it. You must be open and be ready to question.

For example, with Highcon’s digital cutting and creasing solutions - you have the possibility to change the way of working. This may require the customer to make a small change to the substrate to unlock a huge amount of new potential. Yet many will not make a mini change to make a major impact. If you can influence your customers to try new things to create new results, then you should do that. And this is the reason I joined Highcon. Because whenever you add a Highcon machine to a production operation, it challenges the whole workflow and for the better.

How does Highcon technology challenge the entire workflow for the better?

With a traditional printing workflow, you put the file on your pre-press, you print it then you dye-cut, then you cut and ship while using either analogue or digital print technology. It is a left-to-right process.

However, when you have the Highcon system you have the planning backwards. You ask, When do you need to ship it? And then you decide how you finish it and then you plan how to print it. This improves performance hugely. Instead of optimising a job, you optimise an entire shift. You view the whole business's production, not just the single job.

What is your theme of your presentation at CCE?

We will be talking about digitalisation of production and how Highcon’s digital cutting and creasing solutions for post-print processes in the folding carton and corrugated carton

industry, provides a huge opportunity for those willing to change. When we talk to new customers, we tend to take a look at how open their mindset is, and then we like to provide some hard facts. For example, do they have an active e-commerce strategy, or did they make some investments in digital printing in the past? Despite this, 70% of Highcon’s customers did not have digital printing technology beforehand. Why? People can see the possibilities, you have big jobs and small jobs, but they see that the small jobs disrupt production; and it takes too long. With Highcon, this removes the small runs (from the long runs) and enables the right technology to do the right job. The Highcon machine has the advantage for short runs.

Just imagine how much more profitable conventional printing becomes when you remove all the small jobs from conventional production!!

Why Highcon?

Of course, we do have some competitors - however, we do laser cutting and digitally-driven mechanical creasing in a single system, delivering great results. You have both. Some do half cuts but then you cut the paper and the stability of the box suffers. When you use a DART or creasing the strength of the substrate remains, it can therefore be lighter, and this helps reduce cost also. With a Highcon system, you can achieve a short delivery time, measured in minutes or a couple of hours, compared to conventional with 3 days!

Highcon’s solutions are already proven, and we have many customers very satisfied with the

result. This investment has significantly increased agility into production and reduced bottlenecks and waste significantly.

Finally, Highcon is reliable. Highcon has 70 patents, and 70 installs worldwide growing every month.

When making an investment such as this people know that there is a greater risk in not making the investment!

More information on CCE here

More information on Highcon here