According to Joseph Kong, Marketing Manager, Flexolutions, “The main advantage

With the ability to proof on real substrate, the Prediction allows the printer to get the brand owner acceptance for a press proof without having to explain that the medium is different and assume the end user understands. “These days the brand owner is getting quite specific in his  requiremnts. He wants to look at the proof and see exactly what the job will look like when printed on the exact substrate it is intended for, so we don’t proof and laminate onto a substrate. We direct image or transfer on the medium and we also use the same ink pigment so the printer will be matching apples for apples not apples and oranges and assume he’ll get a prefect job simply because they’re both round!”

“These days a proofing system has to be more than just colour concerned, but also has to be substrate concerned, so the print buyer has the confidence to proceed with the job. On the press-room floor the operator also has to have the confidence to be able to look at a proof and now exactly what the job coming off his press should look like.

“It doesn’t matter how advanced the proofing system. In Asia print operators are still coming from a traditional perspective and they don’t trust the digital proofs, whether it be ink or laser jet – it isn’t going to remotely look like the output from his Heidelberg or W&H CI press, so he tends to do a lot of second guessing”.

The Prediction also has the advantage of being able to simulate out-of-registration scenarios. Sheetfed offset presses may have a half a line registration tolerance, a flexo or gravure press may have one line or more tolerance which has to be compensated for in the proof to get accurate results, up to 16 colours. “We can even simulate foil stamping using conventional cold-foil material, and using a digital application we can transfer it to the proof – a value added feature which we don’t charge for.”

In today’s market, particularly with the advance of China, package printing has become commoditised - almost anyone can buy a printing press and run reasonable quality jobs. So with so many new players in the print-market, brand owner judgements are predominantly productivity and price focussed, with turnaround time, minimum orders additional factors – since the assumption is that anyone can do the job.

This puts pressure on the printer who can’t sacrifice his margin so he has to look for ways to become more productive, at a lower cost while offering his customer a range of choices on the brand image, and say “This is what it will look like with gold, silver, UV varnish etc.” Adds Joseph Kong.,“This is of particular importance in an market like China or SE Asia where even the major international brands still have local flexibility to make modifications and incorporate cultural preferences into the global image”.

As Kong sees it, “China is the largest consumer market in the world, and these consumers are very new to the concept of branding, so the brand owners are still looking for the triggers which in the West signify high end or budget product on the store shelf. The Chinese don’t have the points of reference which consumers elsewhere are already armed with!

“Where the MNC brand owners lead, Chinese domestic consumer goods manufacturers follow, and that is the great untapped market.”

As a result, product branding is still in the experimental phase, with the brand owner wanting to prototype a variety of colours and design elements before deciding on the final shelf impact.

“Though the Prediction is primarily intended as a proofing system, many of our customers find that they are able to run it as a prototyping machine and turn it from a cost centre into a profit centre, an important issue when margins are being squeezed!”

As a company, Flexolutions began with a focus on training and marketing to the Flexo print sector. However, as Joseph Kong explained, “We found that the market wasn’t large enough, so we began to diversify our portfolio to cover the packaging print sector, gravure and offset, rather than have a single flexo print focus.

“However we haven’t strayed too far from our flexo roots. Most of our products complement the flexo print process and so far we have found that although our key product is a proofing/ prototyping system, most of our customers are in the flexo business”.

Joseph Kong, attributes the rapid success of the machine in Asia as a result of listening to the voice of the customer; “We all come from a print background, both on the sales and R&D side of the business, not from the computer room. So when we visit customers ,we approach them with the real needs of a printer in mind, and spend considerable time training the printer not just to operate the machine, but to ‘sell’ its output.”