Antoli Imprimeur, located in Carcassonne in the Aude region of France, has a turnover of around 5 million on the POS, commercial, catalogue and, for the last three years, packaging markets. Wishing to develop the latter market, it has just made several machine investments.
Jean-Marc Rhodes, chairman of the 30-strong company, hopes to achieve 20% of its sales in packaging within three years, compared with 5% at present. "We mainly produce offset print runs of 5 to 10?000 copies for organic products in particular, and sometimes up to 100,000 copies. (...) I'm convinced that packaging will continue to grow and I want Antoli to take a share of this market in the years to come." To achieve this goal, the printer has equipped itself with three new finishing and printing machines.
In May, Heidelberg delivered a folder-gluer Diana Go, enabling Antoli Imprimeur to integrate this part of the production. A month later, a Zünd die-cutting table and packaging design software were installed. "We already had a die-cutting plate, but we are very often asked for prototype cases before starting production: this reassures the customer and, for us, allows us to fine-tune the result. This cutting table is perfect for single packs."
And at the beginning of September, Antoli Imprimeur acquired a new digital press, a Heidelberg Versafire EP that replaces an older generation machine. Although it is not exclusively dedicated to packaging, this Versafire offers new possibilities in this field. "We can switch to thicker paper (600 microns compared to 300 before), so we can print small series of cases."
And with these new machines, Antoli Imprimeur carries out the entire production in-house, from creation to realization. "Competition is tough in packaging, but we are currently few players to carry out all production in-house in the Occitan region." says the printer.
He goes on to say: "And our strength is responsiveness. Our customers often point this out to us". He delivers in eight days. "I think it comes from the fact that in printing we're used to working in a hurry. We've transposed that into the packaging."
