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Siegwerk’s strategic focus on packaging printing gains momentum
Siegwerk recently strengthened its water-based ink business through targeted investments and sold its web offset division, both in order to expand its position as a full-range provider for the packaging market.
Siegwerk, one of the leading providers of printing inks for packaging applications, labels, and catalogs, is committed to focusing on the company’s core business in packaging printing. During the last few months the company completed some strategic investments and disinvestments to enhance its product and service offering for packaging printers.
Siegwerk sees a clear need to devote its resources to serving the markets of tomorrow in order to ensure sustained success for the company. In addition to divesting parts of its print media offering, the company invested significantly in the expansion of its water-based ink business. “In line with our goal to offer solutions for all packaging applications - in other words to strengthen our portfolio as a full-range provider for packaging printers - we invested in the expansion of our position in the European market for water-based printing inks”, says Dirk Weissenfeldt, Vice President Paper & Board and Liquid Food Packaging at Siegwerk. “Next to the acquisition of ACTEGA Colorchemie, which opened up new segments and further enhanced our profile as a supplier of water-based printing inks, we recently completed a comprehensive investment project at our technical center in Annemasse, France, and opened a brand new Blending Center for the production of water-based inks.”
The integration of ACTEGA Colorchemie – now Siegwerk Buedingen – into the Siegwerk family has made good progress since the end of April 2016. Strengths are being bundled, technological skills are being shared, and product portfolios are being integrated. “By combining the best of both companies we will be able to offer a comprehensive product portfolio and strongly expand our position in the Paper & Board market in Europe”, adds Dirk Weissenfeldt. “The new automated production facilities in France will further support a continuing expansion of our market positioning in the area of water-based inks.”
The company’s site in Annemasse (France) is the European Center of Excellence for water-based ink production. At production capacity of more than 25,000 tons per year, Annemasse accounts for 10% of the Siegwerk group’s annual output. The French site has about 250 employees. In total, Siegwerk has invested a double-digit million figure in the automation of its production facilities over the last two years.
End of June, Siegwerk celebrated the opening of its new production facilities and invited customers, as well as local authorities and employees to visit the new Blending Center for water-based inks. Several customers from the Flexible Packaging and Paper & Board business areas attended the opening event. “It was great to see Siegwerk’s commitment to its site in Annemasse and to exchange views, experiences and future trends with Siegwerk experts and other industry partners at the opening event”, summarized Alain Zumsteeg, Board Mill Manager at Rossmann Group. “The investments in the site and state-of-the-art technology are a good base to intensify our partnership with Siegwerk going forward.”
As well as visiting the site, customers could also attend interactive workshops so-called INKtalks during the event, where they had the opportunity to get deeper insights and discuss specific topics in more detail. Besides discussions about printing process optimization potential, On-Site Consulting best-practice cases and new developments in energy curing, the recently launched water-based ink series UniXYL was also presented. Customers could see for themselves that this new water-based ink series, partially based on natural resins, is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional inks with the same level of performance: excellent printing results, outstanding color strength, great print quality and good rub resistance at stable viscosity.
Beyond investments in Europe, Siegwerk is further investing in the creation of regional Centers of Excellence in manufacturing in order to improve global processes and therefore getting closer to customers and offer its solutions at the same high quality worldwide. In line with this goal, the company just invested in automation and increased capacity within the manufacturing of water-based and energy curable products at its site in Morganton, North Carolina (USA), and also initiated comprehensive investments in its footprint in China to support the company’s growth strategy and expand its local presence in Asia. Going forward, Siegwerk will continue to focus on expanding its offering for the packaging market. With a combination of best-in-class ink performance, optimum product safety and continuous support and guidance, Siegwerk is making every effort to support customers in addressing upcoming trends and meet their individual needs with cutting-edge solutions.