Sun Chemical to Globally Increase Prices on Color Materials Portfolio

Color Ink announces the purchase of HM Graphics of Milwaukee, WI. HM Graphics ranks among the nation’s elite, full-service commercial printing companies. For over 50 years, they have provided their clients with the highest caliber of services and craftsmanship that the printing industry has to offer. This will allow Color Ink to expand their business with the addition of highly skilled employees and the ability to offer more creative printing services…to include sheet-fed commercial printing, packaging, wide-format visual displays and fulfillment.

Commercial printers are well aware of the benefits of offering package printing, and are taking action to add it to their service offerings. Many factors are removing entry barriers and accelerating commercial printers’ migration into packaging. Ongoing progress in technology innovation, digital printing, early adopter successes, process simplification, customer demands, and fierce competition are all forces enticing and enabling commercial printers to offer labels and other types of packaging. Labels, folding cartons, corrugated containers, and flexible packaging are all print applications typically in high demand and cannot be easily replaced by digital media. A recent NAPCO Research survey of brand owners reveals packaging is a growth opportunity. More than half of brand owners participating in the survey report increasing use of labels, folding cartons, corrugated packaging, and flexible packaging (Figure 1). While this survey was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, NAPCO Research’s ongoing 2020 print provider surveys tracking business conditions indicate packaging has been a resilient application.

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. announced it has extended its partnership with the Plockmatic Group to launch the powerful and versatile SD-435/450 booklet maker. This brings a cost efficient solution for heavy production finishing to low and mid-sized Centralized Reprographic Departments (CRD) and commercial print environments. Plockmatic Group’s inline platform introduces architecture that enables new features for the first time in the low-to-mid volume market segments across Konica Minolta’s AccurioPress mono and color production machines. The inline versions of the SD-435/450 will be exclusively sold by Konica Minolta throughout 2022. The new system architecture enables customers to produce high-quality booklets including 8.5” x 11” landscape and has all the key processes needed to produce corner and edge staple, folding, spine forming and full bleed trimming, all combined in one single, easy-to-use system.