Universitas has been printing in Belgium for 50 years. Founded in 1976 and headquartered in Schoten, near Antwerp, the company runs four locations and prints more than 100 million A4 pages every year. That volume is dominated by university course materials, but the output spans technical manuals, marketing brochures, card applications, and posters.

Everything is printed digitally and almost entirely finished in-house, because today’s customers order on Monday and expect delivery on Tuesday. Outsourcing any step makes that impossible.

When paper is not the right answer

Paper works for most of what Universitas produces, but for some jobs, it does not work at all. The company works with clients in heavy industry and construction whose printed materials are used outside, on machinery, and in conditions that destroy standard paper quickly.

The first response was lamination: print on paper, seal it, protect it. The problem was that lamination is imperfect, and moisture can get in from the edges. A laminated sheet inside a PVC pouch solves this issue, but creates a new one: it looks cheap, and clients in heavy machinery manufacturing have high expectations for anything representing their brand on a job site.

Universitas needed a substrate that could handle outdoor conditions without any of those workarounds.

The Komatsu job that changed the specification

The answer came through a direct relationship with Agfa. Working on a job for Komatsu, the Japanese manufacturer of heavy machinery, Universitas was introduced to SYNAPS.

Komatsu needed quick reference guides: single-sheet documents giving operators the information they need to work with a machine, used outdoors, in all weather, handled constantly. Paper failed. Laminated paper failed more slowly but still failed. SYNAPS worked.

SYNAPS is a polyester-based synthetic paper developed by Agfa. It looks and feels like classic fibre-based paper, but is tear-proof and waterproof, prints across a wide range of digital and offset technologies, and requires no lamination or surface treatment for use in demanding environments. The Komatsu guides came off the press ready to use. No extra steps or compromises on appearance.

Tom Van Uffelen, CEO of Universitas, said, “A quick reference guide on an excavator is not like a brochure on a desk. It gets rained on, handled with work gloves, left outside overnight, and still needs to be legible and intact six months later. We tried lamination first, but water found its way in from the edges, and the result still degraded. PVC pouches solved that problem but created another one. On a job site, appearance matters, and a document in a plastic sleeve does not look like it came from a company that takes quality seriously. SYNAPS comes off the press ready for that environment. No extra steps, no workarounds, and it looks professional from day one.”

From one application to a selling tool

The Komatsu application demonstrated to the Universitas team how SYNAPS holds up under demanding conditions, and the same logic was then transferred to hospitality. Restaurant clients were laminating menus or using PVC sleeves. Universitas showed them SYNAPS: no lamination needed, wipeable surface, no degradation with regular cleaning, and a better feel in the hand.

Today Universitas specifies SYNAPS across industrial documentation, restaurant menus, card games, and binder dividers. Marnix Breekweg, External Sales Representative at Universitas, describes the approach as reference selling. "Most customers have not heard of SYNAPS before we show them," he says. "But once they see what it does and we can point to another client using it for the same application, the conversation moves quickly."

Running it in practice

Universitas runs SYNAPS on Canon toner-based presses. It requires no machine adjustments or special ink profiles. The sheet loads like standard stock and runs full colour without intervention.

This is a very clear advantage, as a substrate that requires reconfiguration adds friction and slows the kind of same-day turnaround the company’s reputation is built on.

Universitas has built enough experience with SYNAPS that Marnix was invited to Agfa HQ to share his finishing knowledge with other printers new to the material. The key detail: cutting pressure needs to be set correctly and blades kept sharp. Get those two things right and there are no issues. It is the kind of operational knowledge that comes from years of real-world use and reflects the close working relationship between the two companies.

Sustainability without the compromise

Universitas takes sustainability seriously. The business operates with solar energy, recycles all waste streams, and chooses dry toner presses in part to support their lower environmental footprint.

SYNAPS fits that philosophy. The material is free of PVC and plasticisers, contains a minimum of 15% recycled PET certified independently by RecyClass, and can be returned to Agfa at its end of life for recycling back into new material. Some might hear 'synthetic paper' and assume the worst about its environmental credentials. When Universitas explains the recycling option to its customers, that concern goes away.

Tom Van Uffelen explained: "Once customers understand that they can return used SYNAPS and it gets made into new SYNAPS, the sustainability question is answered. It becomes part of why they choose it."

Stefaan Smet, Application Specialist SYNAPS at Agfa, said: "Universitas has used SYNAPS across enough different applications today that they understand its strengths and how to present them. The fact that they are also sharing their finishing knowledge with other printers says a lot about the depth of experience they have built. They have turned a substrate choice into a commercial asset, and the industrial reference work with clients like Komatsu is exactly the kind of application SYNAPS was designed for."

To learn more about Agfa, its activities and technology, please visit www.agfa.com.