A steady flow of visitors to Morgana’s showroom in Milton Keynes last week proved the company was right to stage an open house, one of the first events where UK printers could meet in real life since the start of the pandemic.
“We had a really good week,” says Wendy Baker, no doubt anxious before the event as to whether nervousness might get the better of visitors. This would have been worsened by the M25 traffic chaos when climate protesters attempted to close the motorways.
As it happened, the concept of showing digital printing of a highly embellished carton was enough of an attraction to persuade printers to leave the relative safety of their own factories.
Many clearly wanted to find out how many others had survived and to talk about those companies that are no longer around, for one reason or another. “We had the numbers we were expecting,” says Baker.
What they saw was digital printing on the latest Konica Minolta equipment, followed by coating on a Digicoat line, embellishment with spot varnish and foil on an MGI Jet Varnish and then cutting and creasing on a Valiani flatbed table. The finished piece of luxury packaging was suitable to match a gin bottle, especially when it had been personalised with the visitor’s name.
The substrate had been provided by Premier Paper, which has a long record of collaborating with Morgana.
The idea driving the event is the understanding that printers should continue to diversify. This kind of value added packaging is ideal because few of the major packaging groups have any interest in short run production, let alone individual boxes.
Morgana was also producing playing cards, printed, coated and then sent to the RDC – rotary die cutter – for cutting out and arranging in packs.
Despite Morgana having a large showroom where social distancing is possible, the company also erected a marquee to serve food and drink.
“We feel we have done what we can,” says Baker. And with the right quality of visitors turning up and lively discussions between the printers present, print and finishing was refreshed.
