Esko is a very well-known name in the label and packaging field. Their history goes back to the 2001 merger of Barco Graphics and Purup-Eskofot, and the subsequent renaming to Esko in 2006. They further acquired Artwork Systems Group in 2007, which included Enfocus, making them “the” premier developer of software and hardware solutions for packaging prepress and a real powerhouse. In 2011, Esko was acquired by Danaher, which currently owns more than 30 companies in diagnostics, life sciences, dental and environment and applied solutions in an effort to build a group of businesses that support a Product Identification Platform (PID). Other sister companies in this Danaher PID group are Videojet, X-Rite Pantone, AVT, Alltec, and others. It is quite an impressive list of companies that collectively service the vertical packaging design and production market. 

However, as we have seen with other industries and companies, it is important to take a look at where you are, and more importantly where the industry you are serving is going to enable you to better define or even redefine priorities. Recent studies showing that a new product “go to market” timeline is 190 days has forced consumer product companies (CPC) and their suppliers to look at better ways to streamline and automate their processes. The Danaher PID group, with Esko at the core, has been looking at how they can help the market as a whole address those new realities.

The historic Esko client base is packaging design and prepress companies, so they felt it was important to help them better bridge the design and production processes with their clients, the CPCs. Using WebCenter, their project management system as a base, they started to add functionality that would extend the web-based project communication to the CPCs. They subsequently acquired Media Beacon in 2015, which brought an extensive enterprise-level DAM solution to their offerings. This new solution now provides much broader support to the needs of the CPCs beyond just packaging production, including process collaboration, analytics and even video support. In July of this year, Esko acquired Blue Software which brought even more management tools to the collaborative label and artwork management process.