Putting the “Custom” in Customer

pP: How much of your overall business deals with flexo, offset, and gravure?
Bernier: In terms of image carriers, I’d say we’re about 50 percent flexo, 50 percent gravure, with very little offset. We do more than 300 million square inches per year with flexo. We have deployed some exciting technologies addressing the gravure market recently, however. Since digital flexo took off, gravure technology providers have developed workflows and equipment that permit SGS to take a lot of the cost differential out of the equation. It no longer takes 14 hours to engrave a high-quality gravure cylinder. I can use lasers and workflow methodology to get an image of the cylinder in 15 or 20 minutes. Now the end customer has an opportunity to choose according to quality or relationship with the printer and still use a competitive print process. We really don’t have a preference. Our goal is to focus on the cost differential.