The litho and digital printed carton manufacturer in Welwyn Garden City notched up British Retail Consortium (BRC) accreditation, enabling it to diversify its packaging services to include food producers, said sales director Keith Davidson, whose company was audited by SAI Global. This follows the purchase of a six-colour Heidelberg XL105, commissioned just over a year ago to enable the business to tackle long runs. It runs alongside an existing B3 Heidelberg, used for short run materials across sectors including horticulture. “This is a period of exciting growth for us and we want to move into different directions,” he said. “We hope food could form 20% of our turnover and aim to increase it from £7m to £10m in four or five years. We serve several markets and will continue to do so: we do not want to overcommit to one market, we’ve seen competitors do this and get burnt.” The BRC accreditation certifies that the group is meeting standards required of companies supplying food and related packaging. The standard is benchmarked against the Global Food Safety Initiative’s guidance document. Chief executive Bill Duncan said: “Our move into the food market is a logical expansion of our packaging offering, which currently accounts for over half the company’s turnover. Food packaging is a growth area, particularly in the branded, artisan, sector where we can demonstrate our creativity in packaging design as well as customer value.”...

The beta installation, which was originally intended for May, was put back after Nottingham-based Prime Group opted to wait for the cloud-based, software-as-a-service (saas) version of Oneflow to be ready. Oneflow founder Chris Knighton explained that all beta sites had decided to wait for the saas version, with Netherlands-based Digital4 due to install the software over the next few weeks. The cloud-based version has been favoured by beta sites principally because of price, said Knighton. Where previously Oneflow was being priced at around £7,500 for implementation, around £25,000 for annual subscription, and £10,000 upwards for on-site tablet and server hardware, the cloud version is expected to be much more cost effective for most users. “The implementation fee is now only £600, and this will be refunded as ‘click charge’ credits after 12 months if the company decides to stick with Oneflow,” explains Knighton. “Then, instead of an annual subscription fee, users will pay a charge per item, which will be around £1.60 if the company is processing around 25-50 items per day, but could be as low as 3p if printing more.” Knighton explained that ‘an item’ was classed not necessarily as an individual print product but batch of identical products, so six identical calendars for example. Illustrating how OneflowCloud was likely to be more cost-effective than the company’s dedicated platform version, Knighton added that a 25 items per day, 220 days per annum digital printers would pay around £8,800 a year in item charges. A dedicated platform version of Oneflow is still available for those customers expressing data security concerns. However, the 180 or so sites worldwide that have expressed an interest in purchasing Oneflow once it is commercially available in January have all favoured OneflowCloud, according to Knighton. He said: “The message we are receiving loud and clear is that guys want OneflowCloud because it’s more cost-effective and can be deployed faster. It means we can automatically connect into our customers without the need to install any onsite hardware or software. In terms of ease of deployment and support we can accelerate the roll-out of the system in different countries because we can install it remotely.” The benefits of Oneflow over other workflow systems is that it enables ultra-short runs to be produced cost effectively by automating the entire process from file submission to shipping without any manual intervention, said the vendor. “It’s the first workflow system we’ve seen that really allows digital printers to capitalise on the capabilities of their machines,” said technical manager at Prime Barney Netherwood. “All the management for the dispatch and the operation for print seems to be handled exceptionally well by Oneflow and it seems to be the only product that...

The litho and digital printed carton manufacturer in Welwyn Garden City notched up British Retail Consortium (BRC) accreditation, enabling it to diversify its packaging services to include food producers, said sales director Keith Davidson, whose company was audited by SAI Global. This follows the purchase of a six-colour Heidelberg XL105, commissioned just over a year ago to enable the business to tackle long runs. It runs alongside an existing B3 Heidelberg, used for short run materials across sectors including horticulture. “This is a period of exciting growth for us and we want to move into different directions,” he said. “We hope food could form 20% of our turnover and aim to increase it from £7m to £10m in four or five years. We serve several markets and will continue to do so: we do not want to overcommit to one market, we’ve seen competitors do this and get burnt.” The BRC accreditation certifies that the group is meeting standards required of companies supplying food and related packaging. The standard is benchmarked against the Global Food Safety Initiative’s guidance document. Chief executive Bill Duncan said: “Our move into the food market is a logical expansion of our packaging offering, which currently accounts for over half the company’s turnover. Food packaging is a growth area, particularly in the branded, artisan, sector where we can demonstrate our creativity in packaging design as well as customer value.”...

The cards incorporate a built-in landscape screen about the size of an iPad screen which plays video footage as soon as the card is opened. The cards will incorporate play, pause, fast-forward and rewind buttons, and other buttons, pressed through the card, for various videos. This will enable the company to offer a range of tutorials on installing the machines and offering trouble shooting advice. The cards will be offered as a substitute to an engineer installing the vendor’s CreaseStream mini desktop creasing and micro-perforators. Graham Harris, managing director of Tech-ni-fold, said that the company would always lend service support in person where requested, but that this new initiative was designed to save customers the approx £300 cost of having an engineer install the systems. “A lot of people haven’t got time to see demonstrations. This supports that kind of method of business where people look on the web and order something through the post. This adds to this and gives the user that bit more confidence to order it, take it out of the box and gets started as soon as possible,” said Harris. He added: “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t put it on some of the more high-end machines and even eventually the Tri-Creasers, because if we’ve got someone who hasn’t paid attention to the product training there’s always a couple of question marks, but if we put one of these into the box we’re absolutely sure it’s going to answer the questions once those sales people walk off.” According to the developers of the video card technology, the identity of which Harris declined to reveal, this is the first time a company has used the system for instructional purposes. Tech-ni-fold will be demonstrating the instant-play video card technology at the British Inventions Show, Barbican Exhibition Centre, 24-26 October. The vendor will also be delivering technical demos of the CreaseStream mini and hosting a Christmas card challenge where visitors compete to crease as many cards in 60 seconds as possible. Tech-ni-fold is offering free tickets to the show. Contact the company on 01455 554 491 to secure one....

The cards incorporate a built-in landscape screen about the size of an iPad screen which plays video footage as soon as the card is opened. The cards will incorporate play, pause, fast-forward and rewind buttons, and other buttons, pressed through the card, for various videos. This will enable the company to offer a range of tutorials on installing the machines and offering trouble shooting advice. The cards will be offered as a substitute to an engineer installing the vendor’s CreaseStream mini desktop creasing and micro-perforators. Graham Harris, managing director of Tech-ni-fold, said that the company would always lend service support in person where requested, but that this new initiative was designed to save customers the approx £300 cost of having an engineer install the systems. “A lot of people haven’t got time to see demonstrations. This supports that kind of method of business where people look on the web and order something through the post. This adds to this and gives the user that bit more confidence to order it, take it out of the box and gets started as soon as possible,” said Harris. He added: “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t put it on some of the more high-end machines and even eventually the Tri-Creasers, because if we’ve got someone who hasn’t paid attention to the product training there’s always a couple of question marks, but if we put one of these into the box we’re absolutely sure it’s going to answer the questions once those sales people walk off.” According to the developers of the video card technology, the identity of which Harris declined to reveal, this is the first time a company has used the system for instructional purposes. Tech-ni-fold will be demonstrating the instant-play video card technology at the British Inventions Show, Barbican Exhibition Centre, 24-26 October. The vendor will also be delivering technical demos of the CreaseStream mini and hosting a Christmas card challenge where visitors compete to crease as many cards in 60 seconds as possible. Tech-ni-fold is offering free tickets to the show. Contact the company on 01455 554 491 to secure one....