Following the successful completion in November 2021 of the acquisition of the assets of Italian equipment manufacturer Cerutti, BOBST is consolidating its commitment to converters in making gravure a technology for all of today’s market requirements.

As it approaches the 35th anniversary of entering the flexible packaging world, BOBST can boast a steady and unrelenting growth in building a unique offering that today covers the entire flexible packaging value chain end-to end, satisfying all requirements, from entry-level to high-end solutions. The Cerutti acquisition marks the latest step in BOBST’s strategic goal of further consolidating its technology and market leadership in the gravure printing arena. In the pursuit of its strategic objectives, over the years BOBST has brought into the Group historic brands like Schiavi and Rotomec for flexible substrates and Champlain and Kochsiek for carton packaging. These have added to the rich BOBST heritage with their know-how and experience in providing exclusive world-renowned gravure printing technology.

Davide Garavaglia, General Manager and Head of the Product Lines Gravure, Vacuum, Coating & Laminating at Bobst Italia, which is BOBST’s center of excellence for these technologies, takes stock of the great steps taken with each acquisition, and the company’s continuous success on the global market. “I think that our biggest achievement throughout the deployment of our growth strategy in flexible packaging has been our ability to set up the kind of structure and environment that encourages the right synergies. This was achieved by drawing on the human and technical resources and know-how, capitalizing on the opportunities for growth throughout the acquisitions and integration into our group organization,” he said.

History has shown that converters have benefited greatly from the consolidation of the synergies in gravure technology and innovation from Schiavi, Rotomec and the Group capabilities. The trust and confidence of the market in BOBST gravure presses is reflected in the sales figures, which have been consistently high, achieving an incontestable global market premiership, notwithstanding all the uncertainties and difficulties that have characterized the world economy over the past 15 years. The acquisition of the Cerutti know-how will add more value, and act as a catalyst to creating even more solutions for both new and existing equipment.

“Like we did previously, we’ve started working in two parallel tracks, through the work of our technical teams at Bobst Italia which now include Cerutti’s technical expertise working in concert. We’re strengthening the R&D sector to further develop the range of gravure printing presses and processes, and also extending the range of services, sharing one common objective: making best solutions and know-how available to further develop new machines and processes, and to support our customers’ installed equipment,” added Garavaglia.

What’s in store for the future of BOBST gravure?
Looking at the latest BOBST gravure advances, all developed within the framework of the BOBST vision built around automation, digitalization, connectivity and sustainability, the premises are all there for a promising outlook for gravure converters who choose BOBST.

The current gravure press offering, which ranges from flexible packaging and beverages, through to labels, tobacco and specialties like decorative printing for furniture and apparel, security printing for stamps and banknote, and more, will benefit from this new impetus and more resources, especially in the specialties segments. In customer service and support, reliability, and effectiveness of upgrades, and rebuilds of existing machines, are as important to BOBST as is the development of new technologies. For gravure, the Cerutti resources have been fully integrated at Bobst Italia and are now part of the BOBST Service & Performance business unit, which has a strong presence worldwide.

Garavaglia concluded, “By leveraging the resources and multi-disciplinary know-how within the Bobst Group, we will continue to rise to the challenge of bringing gravure to the forefront of the industry transformation. This means taking it out of its conventional zone of medium to high volume production to become a printing technology that is profitable for all of today’s market requirements bringing to them its unique quality of fine print and unparalleled sharp graphic definition.”