Drukkerij Leeflang uses Multicolor and Anicolor technology from HEIDELBERG to simulate spot colors for its pharmaceuticals packaging.

Marco Leeflang established Drukkerij Leeflang in 1994. Based in the Dutch city of Arnhem, the print shop currently has 22 employees and produces packaging for veterinary pharmaceuticals. Run lengths are normally between 100 and 1,000 sheets but can easily reach up to 50,000, while substrates range from 100 gram paper to board 0.8 millimeters thick.

Half format makes good business sense

When it comes to production, Leeflang prefers the half format. “Using a 50 by 70 sheet rather than the 70 by 100 format simplifies and, most importantly, speeds up quality control of the individual repeats on the sheet. What’s more, it halves the amount of paper waste we generate and reduces our cutting die production costs. These business considerations make a clear case for the half format,” explains Marco Leeflang.

Until four years ago, the company’s packaging was printed on a five-color press. At a customer event organized by HEIDELBERG at its Print Media Center in Wiesloch-Walldorf, Marco Leeflang then discovered that Anicolor short inking unit technology and Multicolor could simulate spot colors in seven-color printing. The concept won him over and, realizing that not having to wash the inking unit during every job change could increase productivity several times over, he decided to invest. After all, customers request spot colors for virtually every order.

Up to 80 percent of the PANTONE® color space covered

Leeflang has been operating a Speedmaster XL 75-8+L with Anicolor short inking unit technology since 2017, when it also integrated Multicolor technology into the Prinect workflow control system. From that point on, the print shop has been able to use an autotypical screening process at the prepress stage to digitally substitute solid spot colors with the four primary colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black and the three secondary colors orange-red, blue-violet, and green. Leeflang covers up to 80 percent of the PANTONE® color space with these seven colors. “A hybrid screen – that is to say FM in the OVG secondary colors and AM in the process colors – gave us an excellent match between the screened colors and the original ones,” reveals Marco Leeflang.

Three months after the company first introduced it, Multicolor was already being used to print over 60 percent of jobs. This proportion is now well over 80 percent, and the reason Multicolor is not being used for all jobs has nothing to do with technical limitations. As the print shop founder emphasizes, some customers explicitly ask for their packaging to be printed using mixed spot colors.

Substantial savings on resources

Marco Leeflang was impressed by the Anicolor technology and the Multicolor workflow. Just a few months after commissioning the Speedmaster XL 75, he replaced his Speedmaster SX 52-5+L Anicolor with a Speedmaster SX 52 Anicolor that has seven inking units plus a coating unit. This enabled the print shop to harness all the benefits of Multicolor in the small sheet format, too.

“Thanks to Anicolor and Multicolor, we make big savings on resources. Besides generating far less paper waste than when using conventional inking technology, we have almost entirely eliminated ink changes, job changes take just a few minutes, the ink store is much smaller, and we have significantly reduced our production costs,” continues Marco Leeflang. Another strong argument is that the print shop no longer needs to be mindful of minimizing the number of washup processes when determining the sequence of printing jobs, which makes job planning very flexible.

“The combination of Anicolor short inking unit technology and Multicolor is appreciated throughout the global market,” says Jürgen Link, Product Manager at HEIDELBERG. “From Latin America and the USA to Europe and Asia, there are over 15 Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor presses with Multicolor in use. Some customers have more than one of these presses installed, with up to three at a single company,” he adds.

Significant boost to productivity combined with excellent quality and reproducibility

Marco Leeflang would no longer want to be without his two Anicolor presses. “Thanks to Multicolor and Anicolor technology from HEIDELBERG, there is no need for ink changes, which greatly reduces the workload of our printing team. We combine top offset quality with maximum productivity. Working with Anicolor inking technology and seven colors results in a very stable process, and the reproducibility of results is exceptional,” he concludes.

About Drukkerij Leeflang B.V.:

  • Established in 1994 in the Dutch city of Arnhem
  • 22 employees

drukkerijleeflang.nl

Specialities:

  • Packaging for veterinary pharmaceuticals
  • Folding boxes in a variety of sizes, folded to the smallest size
  • Labels (plano or on a roll)
  • CD sleeves
  • Brochures, leaflets, folders
  • Corporate identity stationery

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