The conditions for manufacturers and processors have tightened significantly over the past decades: They are faced with the almost impossible task of standing out in a saturated competitive environment, of constantly reinventing themselves as a brand and still remaining true to their own identity. In addition, consumers expect unusual designs, fast response times to new trends and inexpensive offers. The whole thing should not have the appearance of mass production and ideally, with a variety of variants, perfectly address the various demands of buyers - above all the desire for sustainability. This phalanx of challenges meets additional regulatory requirements. Together they create the framework within which the manufacturers must act.

The system provider Kurz has recognized that product and brand strategists in the graphics industry are faced with major tasks when it comes to packaging, and they want to tackle these with new, cross-technology solutions. Aspects such as individualization, trends and digitization with simultaneously growing awareness of sustainability form the basis of the holistic approach "The Nature of Attraction", which the company from Fürth presented for the first time at drupa 2021.

Offering new solutions and perspectives

The motto of the hour for manufacturer and product brands is: “It should be even more flexible, far faster and, ideally, sustainable.” The suppliers are also feeling this pressure. In order to remain competitive, it is no longer enough to turn the time and cost screws. Effective systems and products for state-of-the-art packaging solutions secure the future in the printing and packaging industry with their important role in the circular economy. After all, it is packaging with functional and aesthetic surfaces that protect goods, support logistics and trading processes, generate demand, increase the value of branded products and, through their unique design, offer a decisive incentive to buy.

With new perspectives and specific solutions, Kurz wants to ensure that the packaging industry can keep up with the high number of trends and customer requests. Accordingly, the experts at the globally active family company are constantly working on new systems for digital printing and digital finishing, developing hot stamping processes and also bringing innovations to the market for cold transfer. With “The Nature of Attraction” it should be possible to bring together the individual needs of brand manufacturers and suppliers with the range of services of printing companies and finishers. The finishing expert is thus demonstrating his further development from a specialized consumables supplier to one of the leading system providers in the field of thin-film technology with its own innovative machine systems: “Our approach is grounded in our brand identity,” explains Stéphane Royère, Head of International Product Management, and emphasizes: “It is in the nature of the Kurz brand to create an attraction for all products - as efficiently and sustainably as possible.” As a system provider, manufacturers and processors are shown the great potential that lies behind the attractiveness of refined surfaces.

In the fast lane with digital finishing

The Kurz subsidiary STEINEMANN DPE has developed its own range of products for professional processors in the field of digital printing and digital finishing who are under enormous time and cost pressure. With the DM-MAXLINER, the company promises production processes that produce results quickly and easily and thus represent a differentiating factor from the competition.

The digital printing and finishing system creates spot varnishing, relief varnishing with a haptic effect and metallization in a single operation. The DM-MAXLINER delivers high-quality finishing products in a correspondingly shorter time. The digital all-in-one solution for sheet finishing (up to B1 +) on an industrial scale sets new benchmarks in terms of flexibility, quality and efficiency of digital postpress. The machine can be set up in a few minutes with minimal manual effort and runs in the register from the 2nd sheet at the latest. With outputs of up to 10,000 sheets per hour with a pure inkjet UV coating application and up to 5,100 sheets per hour with DIGITAL METAL^® application, the DM-MAXLINER increases the finishing performance of professional printers in all areas of application: from packaging and Commercial printing through to web-to-print and letterpress.

Kurz promises minimal set-up times, high media flexibility and fast order throughput, which in turn has a positive effect on production costs. In addition, there are completely new design options that bring advantages especially with regard to the so-called “mass customization” of the manufacturer.

Shape difficult surfaces effortlessly and quickly

It is not just the digital design options that are constantly being further developed due to the new requirements. Established printing companies in the hot stamping area should also be able to keep pace with the increasing demands of their customers through innovations in the future. The way here leads through product developments and efficient technologies that defuse the cost drivers within the hot stamping process.

So far, the quality of hot stamping has been dependent on the substrate. Refiners must therefore have a large selection of hot stamping decorations in stock in order to be equipped for the largest possible range of surfaces and to be able to serve the corresponding jobs as quickly as possible. High storage costs and an elaborate machine setup due to the change of the hot stamping decoration are inevitable. Time and costs can hardly be saved in this way and lead to lower efficiency.

Kurz recognized precisely this problem and set out to solve it sustainably. Thanks to new, high-coverage transfer products for hot stamping finishing, processors should be able to make their daily work easier. Finishing with LUXOR^® / ALUFIN^® MSU (Multiple Surface Usage) is possible without any problems on all conceivable surfaces, even in high-speed printing, and creates a lot of freedom for the processing company. Because: According to the short promise, you no longer have to struggle with air pockets or orange-peel-like distortions after the embossing.

Behind the product name LUXOR^® / ALUFIN^® MSU there is a universal hot stamping solution that enables decorations to be made from the most sophisticated materials that have so far refused to be surface finished. The processor thus receives a broader range of applications, on the one hand saves time and money with the LUXOR^® / ALUFIN^® MSU and on the other hand can rely on the reliable properties. Whether on coated or printed paper, on a wide variety of laminates or UV-lacquered surfaces: even with flat motifs, air inclusions are no longer an issue. But even with the finest motifs and high printing speed, LUXOR^® / ALUFIN^® MSU delivers sharp-edged decors with high gloss thanks to their soft detachment. As with the transfer products of the same name, the hot stamping solution can be used to create high-gloss or matt surfaces as well as tactile effects - whether with relief, micro- or nano-embossing. Kurz offers the product worldwide - in many standard colors. Individual color solutions are also possible.

Breaking new ground - also with cold transfer

Even processors who rely on highly efficient cold transfer finishing are now feeling the pressure that weighs on the entire industry: speed, optics, cost efficiency and sustainability are also playing an increasingly important role here. Cold transfer is highly efficient when it comes to finishing packaging, advertising print jobs, magazines and wet-glue labels in sheetfed offset, because printing and finishing can be carried out in one pass. In addition, almost all metallic effects can be created due to the overprintability. Depending on the transfer product, matt gloss effects can be implemented just as easily and quickly as high gloss effects. Despite excellent gloss, high performance and the best price-performance ratio, the efficiency limit of the processor has largely been reached.

The reason: With cold transfer, the processing of the transfer product has to do one thing above all: work smoothly. No parameter may jeopardize production stability and thus job processing under time pressure. The refinement must be up to the speed. Their transfer must be ensured just as easily as optimal adhesion, flexible overprinting and pronounced edge definition - regardless of the nature of the design (e.g. fine elements or large areas), the adhesive, the colors or the substrate.

In order to reliably achieve this production stability while using less material and time, Kurz has developed a new cold transfer formulation with a wide range. With the new KPS SX + cold transfer product, the company is offering a solution for the first time that, thanks to its extended processing window, makes the use of several products for different cold transfer finishes superfluous and is also easy to set up and process.

The new formulation is suitable even for sophisticated designs and grid gradients. The range of areas of application is wide: KPS SX + is suitable for conventional and UV systems with regard to adhesives and inks, for different substrates, food packaging and film-saving modules as well as for flat and filigree motifs.

If it is processed with the appropriate KPS consumables (printing blanket and adhesive), the KPS SX + can even do jobs where laminates need to be replaced. “Our customers have had the best experiences with these complete packages,” reports Norbert Hell, Global Business Development Manager Cold Transfer at Kurz. This aspect in combination with the eco-efficient balance of the cold transfer process will move the new KPS SX + - also in view of the increasing demands on the sustainability of print products - into the focus of processors, according to the Kurz expert. Because: With its properties, it has a positive effect on the sustainability balance of the product to be refined, which in turn represents a decisive competitive argument for processors.

The cold transfer formulation not only fulfills essential legal requirements such as those of the electronics industry (RoHS) or those of the packaging industry (CONEG). Articles finished with KPS SX + can also be recycled after use. Because when processing the finishing - as with every transfer product from Kurz - no PET film remains on the finished end product. In addition, KPS SX + (as KPS RECO +) is suitable for the KURZ RECOSYS^® recycling program.

Sustainability as a key to success for refiners

When it comes to finishing packaging, manufacturers and processors do not just strive for cost efficiency. In terms of environmental friendliness and sustainability, new standards must always be set. The environmental compatibility along the entire supply chain and thus also in terms of packaging must be presented transparently and credibly. Kurz has set precisely this standard with RECOSYS^® and offers market participants clear added value: The take-back and recycling system is in tune with the times in the graphics industry and creates this transparency advantage for processors. Participating finishers can advise customers on how attractive print products with consistent, certified sustainability can be realized.

This transparency advantage not only has a positive effect on the brand image of the manufacturer. It also clears up a prejudice: for decades, the term embossing foil had established itself as a term for metalized decorations among processors and manufacturers. When finishing with short thin film technology, no film is transferred to the substrate. The wafer-thin PET sheet, which was previously thermally recovered and is now being taken back and recycled by Kurz, only serves as a carrier for the transfer of the wafer-thin packages of lacquer. The aluminum layer applied to the substrate is only 0.02 μm thick, and the amount of lacquer is also very low (~ 2.4 g / m²).

Specifically, this means: With the finishing technology, processors and manufacturers are able to efficiently and sustainably transform products into eye-catchers at the POS. This performance is achieved through an application of material that is 6,000 times thinner than a human hair and whose means of transport, a PET carrier, can be taken back as valuable material, recycled and returned to the cycle as a new raw material RECOPOUND^® in the future.

What sounds simple is only possible with a strong system provider on the side of the manufacturers and finishers. The company Kurz from Fürth has been facing these challenges for years together with its customers and partners and has been helping to provide the finishing industry - regardless of whether digital, hot or cold - with new and more resource-efficient process solutions. LUMAFIN^®, the semi-transparent, aluminum-free decoration with a depth effect, or LIGHT LINE^® with hologram effects are just two examples.