mented Vice President Naohiro Yoshimura.President Oshiro continued, “One time, a customer wanted to sell vegetables in bags print-ed with their brand name with less than a month to go before an event. We were not aware how long it would take to deliv-er the product, and in the end, we could not meet the delivery deadline. In discussions with our sales staff, it was suggested that we could do our own flexi-ble packaging as a way to shorten the delivery time.Currently, the company’s minimum delivery time is ap-proximately two weeks. “We can Reduce logistics costs, and customer can also come to confirm the work. We also want customers to be aware of the advantages of our print-ing methods, such as high-mix, small-lot production and low environmental impact,” said Vice President Yoshimura.Interest in flexo through exhibitionInitially, the company was considering digital printing, but after meeting SCREEN GP Japan during a visit to the Inter-national Graphic Arts Show 2022 (IGAS) in 2018 led to an interest in flexible packaging printing with flexo.“As we began to investigate the flexible packaging mar-ket in Okinawa Prefecture in earnest, we found that there were many small lots of many different products. The av-erage lot size was 2,000 m, and at most 6,000 m. In some cases, the lots were 1,000 m, which we found to be difficult to handle for gravure. There were quite a few local confec-tionery manufacturers who told us that they did not need that many products, but they would place orders for gra-vure lots,” said Vice President Yoshimura.President Oshiro also commented, “Whether a product is chosen depends largely on the beauty of the packaging, so we strongly felt that the manufacturer wanted us to print on film, not labels or stickers. Three years after we began studying flexible packaging, we finally decided to install a flexographic printer. From the beginning, we had the choice of gravure or flexo in mind, but it would be difficult to master gravure printing technology, and we thought flexo was not yet ready for the Japanese flexible packaging market, so SCREEN’s proposal for water-based flexo was a shock. I was surprised because I didn’t think flexo could produce this much color.”Jobs plummet due to CoronaThe decision to install a flexographic press was reached and President Oshiro signed the order on December 27, 2019. However, the company began losing work at an unbeliev-able rate in early 2020 due to the new coronavirus infection.“At the time, I thought, ‘I’ve done it...’. I even said to the board, ‘I’ll consider the down payment as a study fee, and may cancel the installation. Even so, I was so happy that tears came to my eyes when factory members said, ‘The other press have stopped operating altogether, but we have flexo printing. When tourism comes back, flexo printing will surely work.’ If it wasn’t for that, I would have stopped” re-calls President Oshiro.Installing Neil Peter’s “The All New FA22” “The All New FA22”, a 22” wide modular multi-purpose 8-color flexo printing machine made by Neil Peter of Den-mark, was installed at the company’s factory in Itoman City on November 2020. The unveiling of the machine was held in March 2021. More than 100 companies, including con-fectionery manufacturers in Okinawa, came to see the ma-Flexographic 8-color press “The All New FA22”Itoman FactoryVice President Naohiro Yoshimura5
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