Ultimate Digital has installed a second HP Indigo 20000 at its plant near Grimsby, an indication of the growing demand for digitally printed packaging.
The investment comes on the success of the personalised KitKat campaign which has already earned the company a number of accolades, and demonstrated that flexible packaging can be personalised.
“We will have the new machine running 24 hours a day within three to four months and then can upgrade the existing machine to the latest specification,” says Ultimate Group executive director Chris Tonge. “We are producing quite a lot of short run work for those that want to pay the price and doing some clever campaigns for those that want to use it in the right way.”
This includes operating with the Smartflow digital workflow application that Ultimate has developed to handle the logistics as well as the printing for personalised packaging. Now it is teaming up with Kalas Packaging to be able to include digitally printed cartons in a promotional campaign for a brand.
Kalas Packaging in Boston, on the same stretch of coast as Grimsby, operates the first HP Indigo 30000 digital carton press in the UK. Kalas will run the same Smartflow workflow as Ultimate. It operates with food safe low migration inks and has an inline UV coater. “We will be able to offer brands a campaign that includes flexible and cartons,” says Tonge. “We are getting closer and closer to a fully digital offering all the time.
“We now need to bring a digital label company on board to have the full Indigo offering.”
Ultimate installed the first Indigo 20000 in 2015 joining an IIndigo WS6600 which had been running smaller volumes of flexible packaging. It remains the only company with the Indigo digital press in this country, though others are selling digital printing for flexible using facilities outside the UK.
Ultimate Digital has joined one of the few companies with a brace of HP Indigo 20000 presses for flexible packaging. And with its Smartflow workflow it is joining forces with Kalas Packaging, the first company in the UK to install an HP Indigo 30000.
