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Cary Sherburne:  Hi, I'm Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink and I'm here with Kevin Karstedt, who is the CEO of Karstedt Partners, LLC.  Welcome.

Kevin Karstedt:  Thank you very much.  Thanks for having me.

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah here we are at Drupa 2012. It's been a little cold and rainy but it's been pretty warm inside the halls.  

Kevin Karstedt:  Yes it has.  It's been hot inside the halls.

Cary Sherburne:  Inside the halls.

Kevin Karstedt:  Yes, it has.

Cary Sherburne:  Maybe you can tell us what you see as the top two or three important takeaways from Drupa in terms of the pac—it's not really a packing show, but there' s lot of packing stuff here.

Kevin Karstedt:  There is.  There is.  And I'm really excited about a number of things that are going.  I mean, obviously the biggest one is the Landa and HP.  I want to put those two together because both have come up with a packaging specific product unlike some of the others that say they can do packaging because they can simply do board on a sheet fed digital press.  But these two came up with specific products for the packaging sector.  Either both folding carton and flexible packaging.

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah sheet fed and roll fed.

Kevin Karstedt:  Exactly.  Which is really, really good that they come out with products that are specifically targeted at packaging.  And they both seem to be on the same release track, if you will – beta end of year, early next year – and then out of beta next year.  See how that all shapes out.  But they seem to be on kind of a parallel path.  Another interesting technology is on the folding carton is Highcon that has the—

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

Kevin Karstedt:  Yeah.  Very, very interesting technology.

Cary Sherburne:  And that's Highcon, because –

Kevin Karstedt:  Yeah, all one word.

Cary Sherburne:  From out of Israel.  And by the way, that's another Landa investment.

Kevin Karstedt:  Yes it is.  And interesting there, Landa Investment and x—

Cary Sherburne:  Ex-Indigo people--

Kevin Karstedt:   Guys.  But really, really good technology.  Early on it's kind of the first of its breed, if you will –

Cary Sherburne:  And for our viewers that don't know what that is.  It's laser die cutting and creasing.

Kevin Karstedt:  It's laser die cutting and non-laser creasing.  And the bug-a-boo for using lasers for folding cartons was you can't crease with a laser.  So, but they've come up with a way to do it.  Geared for short runs.  And you won't just see these things attached to digital presses.

Cary Sherburne:  You'll see them with traditional.  Yeah.

Kevin Karstedt:  With conventional presses.  Yeah.

Cary Sherburne:  You know and the other thing that's interesting about what's missing right now is they don’t have any in-line stripping.  So stripping off the waste.  But that's coming I'm told.

Kevin Karstedt:  That's coming and you know surprisingly enough there's a lot of folding carton, more on the niche applications, that are doing hand stripping anyway.  So it's—

Cary Sherburne:  And I mean these are short runs.  I mean they run 1,500 sheets an hour so it's not like a person could keep up with that pretty easily.

Kevin Karstedt:  And it's going to be – it's an evolution.  It's going to improve by Drupa 2016 there'll probably be a couple of other solutions out there and this will be much more refined and prices will be down and all that stuff.

Cary Sherburne:  So we've talked about some of the printing technologies that we're seeing.  And we've talked about the – some of the finishing options that we're seeing today and that we'll see coming and when we get back together I'd like to chat with you a little bit about the front end.

Kevin Karstedt:  Okay.  Can I bring up one more thing?  The stalworths.  The ones that have been in it.  The Xicons and the HP with the other technologies.  They need to be recognized, too.  

Cary Sherburne:  Yes.

Kevin Karstedt:  They are coming out with brand new things.  They're expanding their portfolios.  People shouldn't just disregard them because of all the new sexy stuff coming.  There's a place for that.  They'll continue being productive and making money for their owners.  

Cary Sherburne:  Terrific.  Thank you.

 

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