Packaging is crucial for driving product selection, particularly with many buying decisions made in “the last four feet” based on the perception that packaging creates. For brand owners, packaging is a strategic tool that can drive profitability. Packaging and label converters are re-evaluating their business models and transforming themselves from producers of goods to providers of services. They are examining tools to provide brand owners with affordable solutions for versioning, personalization, new packaging, anti-counterfeiting, security, flexibility for an increased number of SKUs, improved turnaround time, reduced waste, and improved time to market.

Creating a package and getting it to the right shelf at the right time is a complicated process. Many stages have been streamlined by digital technology, reducing cycle times and cost while improving flexibility. Design and preparation for the printing process (art working and prepress) have been digitized, and the printing process itself has been streamlined. At the same time, however, the cutting and creasing of carton board to create the physical form of a package has historically been a bottleneck. While the graphical elements of a package can be created, approved, and printed in hours or days, cutting and creasing (particularly the preparation and set-up of the cutting and creasing machinery) can add weeks to the process. Current techniques also incur significant set-up costs to manufacture the cutting and creasing die and prepare it for production. These high setup costs and times do not sit comfortably with the market’s demands for cost-effective production of smaller quantities of more versions produced on demand.

Highcon, a market innovator dedicated to streamlining the converting process, addressed this issue head-on with the introduction of Euclid, the industry’s first production-speed digital cutting and creasing machine. Euclid transforms cutting and creasing from an analog to a digital workflow, dramatically streamlining the finishing process. The device was launched at the drupa exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany during May 2012.