The BOBST Sessions created a real BUZZ at the October #FuturePrint Virtual Summit
“The BOBST vision for the packaging industry”
BOBST Speaker: Francois Martin, Marketing & Communication BOBST
In the current packaging environment, there is significant disruption – including COVID-19, smaller brands with new business models, and corporate sustainability commitments. Brand owners also face increased competition and pressures around shorter times to market, smaller lots sizes and color consistency.
But it is also a period of great opportunity, built around greater agility and sustainability. BOBST is helping to pioneer a fundamental transformation of the packaging value chain, from a series of isolated silos, to a connected end-to-end overview. All stakeholders throughout that chain want optimum quality, efficiency, control, sustainability and proximity.
To enable this, BOBST has announced its vision to shape the future of the packaging world and built a strategy based on four pillars: connectivity, digitalization, automation and sustainability. It already has multiple innovations that bring these pillars to life – for example, Toolink for connectivity, the MASTER CI flexo press for automation and the MASTER DM5 hybrid press for digitalization.
Underpinning all of the individual solutions is BOBST Connect, an open architecture platform that orchestrates the entire packaging production process and integrates all key components to make packaging production more effective.
BOBST is ready to shape the future of the packaging world.
“Zero-fault packaging”
BOBST Speaker: Bodo Junge, Product Marketing Director Folding Carton
In today’s packaging environment, quality has never been more important. If packaging fails the quality test, the consequences can be significant in terms of waste, cost and reputation, and in some sectors (e.g. pharmaceuticals), can even put people at risk of harm.
Bodo Junge, Product Marketing Director Folding Carton
Bodo Junge presented on the new BOBST ACCUCHECK, which makes zero-fault packaging a reality. The new ACCUCHECK is an in-line solution to inspect carton blanks for defects as they enter the BOBST folder-gluer and is compatible with the latest generation of MASTERFOLD 75 / 110 or EXPERTFOLD 50 / 80 / 110 machines. It automatically and accurately ejects defect boxes at speeds of up to 500m per minute, considerably faster than the original ACCUCHECK.
Other new features include embossing, foil and varnish inspection, advanced reporting, and PDF management. Meanwhile, the new smart text feature ensures that even the smallest text errors are detected. For a company like Cartograf, whose primary focus is in the pharmaceutical industry, features such as this make the ACCUCHECK a “mandatory requirement” for their customers. “It gives us assurance that all boxes produced conform to the approved PDF,” said Cartograf owner Claudio Ferroli.
Mr Armando Zanini, CEO of Italian company Prealpi, revealed that they were so convinced by the need for the new ACCUCHECK that they took the unusual step of investing in the machine before selecting a folder-gluer. “We produce packaging with foil, laminates and emboss and needed a solution that can detect faults on those surfaces,” he explained.
“The future of flexible packaging”
BOBST Speaker: Christian Zeller, Strategic marketing director for labels & flexible packaging
While packaging overall has declined in value in 2020 due to COVID-19, future growth rates are healthy, and the projected value growth of flexible is the highest of all. While it is a very exciting time for the flexible packaging industry, there are several challenges, including batch size diminution, packaging variation and complexity, faster time to delivery, cost pressures and sustainability.
Current hot topics include:
Impact of COVID
Some trends have been accelerated due to COVID, including the rise in e-commerce and people eating more meals at home.
Demands on packaging may change as a result. The shelf appeal may matter less compared to a safe delivery to the home.
Sustainability
We are going in the right direction with more sustainable packaging, but can only master this with partners throughout the whole supply chain. Every production step needs to contribute.
The potential of mono materials is exciting, but barrier function is paramount. Poor quality means waste and poor sustainability.
Traditional supply chains
Increased complexity and need for short runs promotes the use of digital to be able to respond quickly to market conditions.
It is not just about an increase in digital printing, but the digitalization of conventional technology. The BOBST MASTER M6 – a flexo press equipped with DigiFlexo automation and oneECG technology delivering non-stop production through a centralized fully digitalized press operation – is the perfect example.
Key future developments.
It will become even more important for the industry to master the full supply chain – and not only the substrate value chain but the data value chain as well.
BOBST Connect is a solution exactly for that – a one-stop platform that gives printers, converters and tool manufacturers access to our ecosystem of digital services