Brilliant colours for digital decoration

Perhaps quite a few among you are familiar with the following situation: you’re standing in front of a supermarket shelf, are downright overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of products on offer there and once again cannot make up your mind – I for my part then simply choose the product that catches my eye first. I often find myself in this situation, for example, in front of the wine shelf. So I then buy the bottle that’s most visually appealing. And this is precisely why individual packaging designs are so important for our customers.

Here, a new type of decoration technology is offered by digital direct printing. No matter whether it’s bottles, cans or tubes: digital decoration technology enables clients to print individualised, top-quality images on containers made of glass and PET. Decorating small batches and individual packages is likewise possible. In contrast to traditional labels, it also provides options for selectively printing on embossed and structured surfaces, thus creating amazing combinations of look and feel.

The technology

Sounds like an elaborate production process? But it isn’t: so as to make it as easy as possible for companies to start with digital direct printing, Krones’ subsidiary Dekron offers them not only the machine technology required but likewise the entire associated process from a single source. This all-inclusive package subsumes both the machines from the DecoType series, and definition and implementation of the requisite process characteristics, plus setting up the workflow concerned. In this way, digital direct printing provides producers of consumer articles and of packages with new options for designing packages that stand out from the crowd and gladden consumers’ hearts. Simply select an individual artwork, and off you go. There are no creative limits to your imaginative design ideas – you can see the bottle as your blank canvas.

The colours

Once you’ve opted for your individual artwork, you must next choose the colours for your design. The colour space is based on the CMYK model, where the printed image is underlaid with white ink, and the different hues are created from the four components Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (Key). As a widely used printing standard, the CMYK model already covers a very broad spectrum of colours. But this is not all: if a client wishes to have his individual corporate or brand colours, he can extend the colour space, or alternatively also use special inks that are developed jointly with him. The Krones multicroma series from KIC Krones has been especially adapted to suit the requirements of digital decoration technology. What does that mean specifically? The UV inks possess an excellent opacity and cover a wide colour space. What’s more, thanks to their high adherence and scratch-resistance, they will continue to stick firmly to the container even when it is exposed to moisture or other types of stress. You will find more details on these UV inks at KIC Krones, our subsidiary that, by the way, also offers labelling and packaging adhesives, lubricants, cleaning agents, disinfectants, plus products for water treatment and membrane cleaning covering each and every step in a beverage line’s production sequence.

In view of such creative packaging designs, it will in future surely be not so easy for me to choose a wine from the shelf. And when you find a direct-printed bottle on the supermarket shelf when next going shopping, then you know at least how such a bottle is decorated!