Located in Dartmouth, on the East Coast of Canada, overlooking Halifax and the upper end of Halifax Harbour (Bedford Basin), Royale Print & Packaging Limited is one of the first Canadian printers to start production each day. The Port of Halifax was a primary staging point for convoys supplying Great Britain with food and supplies during World War II.

Today, the province supplies seafood, agricultural and manufactured products to the rest of Canada, the United States and internationally. Royale is almost 125 years old and primarily prints folding cartons and labels for manufacturers in various industries in Nova Scotia, Eastern Canada and United States. According to Jan Riber Hansen, Operations Manager of Royale Print & Packaging, "We have built our business on our reputation to provide high levels of print quality with accurate on-time delivery. We need suppliers who can support us with a similar philosophy." Two years ago, the company decided that they needed to further enhance their quality, automation and workflow. As a member of CTI Group in Austria, a player active in various parts of the world in manufacturing packaging, they knew that others in the Group had positive experiences with manroland and decided to continue this in Canada. They invested in a ROLAND 700 HiPrint press with six print units. To meet the specialized needs of the packaging market, the press was equipped with two aqueous and UV coaters and was highly automated to enhance quality and performance. To be as open as possible for the future, Royale Print and Packaging decided to prepare the press for UV inks and interdeck curing stations and for any further upgrades.

The production team received training in several ways for the new press. First, they attended the basic training at the Print Technology Centre in Westmont, IL. Once the press was installed, manroland Print Trainers conducted the advanced training onsite with the new press. The production plan called for a wide variety of substrates so a third training course was conducted in various areas on the press to fully utilize all the potential and features of the press with a Master Printer from the Offenbach factory running make-ready drills and tests for the production team. The press is running two shifts during months with average production and in months where higher output is required to satisfy client demands, the press is running 24/7 with three shifts.

"Food packaging customers have very short turn-around times and tight deadlines to prevent spoilage or expiration and to meet market demands. The printing process must meet those deadlines even on JIT shipments." Pleased with the response and support from manroland, the company last fall selected manroland for a multi-year printservice onsite service plan that includes inspections, maintenance, alarm analysis, special lubrication and much more. This allows the production team to focus on their core competencies in the packaging market, such as print quality, speed and new product opportunities, with a production platform that is consistent and reliable.

To complete the support package, Royale partnered with manroland on a printcom consumables program. printcom is manroland's line of engineered process compliant materials that are tested and certified to be compatible with each element of the printing process. Mr. Riber Hansen added, "Food packagers are primarily concerned about the ink, coatings and other chemicals used to produce the food packaging, but they also review the cleaning materials as well." Doug Grierson, Director of Service for manroland, said, "These materials offer the assurance that the process is running at optimal levels and eliminates the guesswork that too often accompanies the consumable selection process. manroland chemists and technicians save printers the time on quality assurance and testing." These high-performance components include fountain solution, washes, lubricants and corrosion resistant coatings specifically designed and quality tested by manroland to excel in print performance. manroland Inc., a division of manroland AG, is the world's second largest printing systems manufacturer and the world's market leader in web offset. manroland employs almost 8,700 people and has annual sales of some Euro 1.7 billion with an export share of almost 80%. Web and sheetfed offset presses provide solutions for publishing, commercial and packaging printing.