Southern Graphic Systems

Competition was stiff among top high school performers from across North America in the Phoenix Challenge High School Flexo Competition. A total of 19 teams participated, a total which has grown every year since the Phoenix Challenge high school program began in 1998.

DuPont Packaging Graphics installed the first DuPont Cyrel® FAST round sleeve processing systems in North America. The evaluation units were installed at Southern Graphic Systems located in Hickory, N.C., and at OEC Graphics in Oshkosh, Wis.

Flexographic printing has come a long way, baby! It’s not your father’s printing process anymore (not even your older sister’s). Flexography has made huge technological gains in many areas, resulting in print quality improvements that have allowed it to rival the benchmark standards established by gravure and offset printing. These improvements, combined with some of its cost advantages, have allowed flexo printing to become a major force in the package-printing arena. “The flexo print process has made great strides in the last decade,” says Darko Martinovic, managing director, SGS Evolution Designworks. “Advances such as hybrid screening, photopolymer plates, direct-to-plate technology, and gearless presses

CLEMSON, S.C.—This seminar has been developed by collaborators from consumer product groups, prepress vendors, package printers, and Clemson University to bring together, discuss, and educate the package-printing industry and its allied vendors about brand color management. This seminar outlines the opportunities and challenges for creating state-of-the-art brand color management programs, and presents the value of creating and sustaining quality color standards, as well as offering the tools and questions needed to understand, initiate, and monitor your brand color management program. Featured presenters include: • Kevin Chop, Diageo Consumer Goods • Shannon Steele, The Coca-Cola Company • Hazel Van Buren, The Coca-Cola Company • Iain

“Design2Print” is an ambitious tagline for a company with a singular focus on customer service. Established in 1948, Southern Gravure Systems (SGS) had been a part of Reynolds Metal Co. since 1958, later becoming its wholly owned subsidiary with Alcoa’s purchase of Reynolds in 2000. The company has pursued an aggressive strategy of growth through acquisition, having rolled up 21 acquisitions, most of them independent trade shops, since 1999. In the early- to mid-1980s, SGS recognized that a majority of the gravure cylinders it manufactured for printers were intended for relatively few consumer product companies (CPCs). Consequently, the company determined that there was a need

The Flexographic Prepress Platemakers Association (FPPA) convened its ninth annual convention last month in Amelia Island, Fla. During the three-day conference, presenters from the supplier and provider communities shared their insights on a variety of topics. Following a keynote address by Bill Raaths, CEO of Great Northern Corp., sessions included “The Effect of Simultaneous Imaging and Direct UV Main Exposure on Digital Plates and Sleeves” by Ian Hole of Esko-Graphics; “Remote Digital Proofing: Contract Color and Content Proofing at Remote Sites” by Deborah Hutcheson of Agfa Corp.; “Forensically Invisible Brand Protection Packaging” by Kevin Harrell, Creo/Kodak; “In-the-Round Production Technology” by Dan Rosen of Flint

Automation in prepress can significantly improve time to market through workflow process integration. THE AIM OF workflow automation is to be able to respond to customer requirements quickly. This is accomplished by minimizing or eliminating, as completely as possible, the manual steps that can lead to the costly waste of time, materials, and labor. While developments in workflow automation for packaging tend to mimic those in the commercial printing world, software and equipment vendors continue to develop and refine a variety of integrated tools designed to accommodate the special needs of packaging operations. According to Jan De Roeck, marketing director for packaging

Though available for years, options are just now being used to improve prepress workflow. Like most businesses in the current economy, convertors are constantly looking to increase their cost-effectiveness through new technology. One often-overlooked stage that printers have begun to explore in an effort to improve workflow, and therefore costs, is the prepress facet of the industry. Improvements in prepress workflow and/or data transmission have been available for quite a while now, but converters have been slow to take advantage of these opportunities. "The tools for improvement are there," says David Zwang, IPA operational TEAM consultant leader and founder of Zwang & Company,

At prepress trade shop Southern Graphic Systems, "to measure is to know." by Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor Last December, I was tickled to see Denny McGee—a man named one of the 1990s' "ten most influential people in the packaging industry"—address a room full of his peers with a giant piece of cheese on his head. McGee, hosting the Educator Seminar Series, was playfully hammering home the point that someone has been messing around with the printing food chain. Markets are moving, demands are changing, and we can't expect to find our profits in the same place we found them yesterday. No single group of

Part one of a two-part series exploring how some of the largest prepress companies achieve major-league technology initiatives. by Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor Here we are again. At the point in the grand American economic cycle where it seems that big companies just keep getting bigger, while small companies battle for survival among the giants. As consumers languishing on the other end of perpetual hold, we might wonder just what's so great about the race towards consolidation. Frustrated with the complicated, sometimes dehumanizing experience of doing business with a corporate Goliath, it's easy to believe that mega-companies are endless, faceless entities where nothing