Focus on Folding Carton Innovation
A new Gallus folding carton production system has helped Cadmus Whitehall Group focus on helping its customers face increasing competitive pressures.
THE CADMUS WHITEHALL Group has roots dating back to 1902, close to one hundred years before it moved into its current flagship facility in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1997. This building covers more than 300,000 square feet with more than 300 associates, a big step from the business in the early 1900s. Jerry Lux, president, Whitehall Group, attributes this growth to the company's "commitment to customer service and a focus on each customer. It is innovation and technology that really separates our business in the minds of our customers."
To maintain its strong market presence—which was marked by $78 million of business in FY 2005—Cadmus has to have top-notch equipment to run its folding carton printing business and compete in this competitive industry. For this reason, Cadmus has ordered its second Gallus KM 510 in-line folding carton production system for the Charlotte facility. This system will augment a similar Gallus press installed in May 2004.
"This technology is a great complement to our offset printing capabilities," said Jay Gibble, VP of manufacturing, Cadmus. "The 20˝ web format is perfect for smaller package structures and shorter runs increasingly common in today's market. However, it's the broad range of in-line value-added features such as foil stamping, screen printing, and film lamination that really puts this technology at the head of the class."
There's good in small packages
As Gibble said, Cadmus had to choose a new production line that would help them with a relatively new phenomenon in the converting business—smaller cartons and shorter runs. Cadmus has primarily used offset printing for its carton work, which historically provided the best combination of graphic reproduction and flexibility. But today, flexo has jumped into the foreground of its production options.
"Recent advances in flexo technology have allowed us to add flexographic printing to this mix in the past two years," Lux said. "Combined with improved digital prepress capabilities, this technology is now capable of competing with offset. This is particularly true with smaller carton structures and shorter runs increasingly common in the market today."
Cadmus supplies products for the healthcare, apparel, technology, and consumer goods packaging markets, but its core competency is graphic reproduction—which is why Lux said Cadmus uses multiple processes including flexo and offset—to add spice to its printed products.
"While we work everyday to tweak our processes to find efficiencies, our ultimate goal is to work in tandem with our customers to make a more dramatic impact on their businesses. This may manifest itself in the development of innovative package structures that boost sales of the product. It may be the introduction of alternative substrates or production processes to improve time-to-market or reduce costs. It could be a new inventory management program," said Lux.
Raking in the market share
According to Lux, customers choose Cadmus for their folding carton work because of the variety of ways the company can bring value to their businesses. A modern trend in the converting industry is one of the forces driving Cadmus to look for new ways to become a better converter—globalization.
"Globalization is a major trend. Many of our customers now manufacture their products in diverse locations around the world. This presents challenges for buyers who now must project a common brand image on packages produced in a variety of the different locations," said Lux.
This is one reason why Cadmus produces packaging all over the world, in facilities in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Thailand, China, and India. A new facility in Honduras is slated to open later this year. Another way Cadmus has changed the way it does business to maintain its competitive edge in the worldwide converting business, includes the aforementioned new inventory management program.
Cadmus' inventory program has recently moved the company from a "print and distribute" business model to a more "distribute and print" scenario, said Lux. "The ability to have product in the right place at the right time has become mission critical to the supplier selection process. We have invested extensively in our proprietary 'Real-time Inventory Management System' to give our customers visibility into the status and location of their goods," said Lux. "We have built a state-of-the-art logistics center where automated guided vehicles expedite the movement of goods into and out of our print manufacturing operation. This commitment to the back end of the printing process has been a big part of our success in the market."
Another way Cadmus has reached new markets is, in essence, to learn from the past—taking what it learned from its current customers and applying that knowledge to expand into new segments of the market, something Lux calls "Best Practices."
"Our business has experienced rapid growth over the last few years. This growth has come from a healthy mix of current customer growth, new customers in our existing markets, and expansion into new markets. For example, the technology we developed to integrate CD-ROMs into packaging for our technology customers also has application for the dissemination of electronic information in the healthcare market," Lux said.
New equipment for new business
Cadmus prints on a variety of paperboards and fine papers and also produces packaging on rigid plastics, foils, and specialty substrates, and they use both UV and water-based inks. Due to this vast array of materials, Cadmus employs a number of different presses. Its offset presses are all manufactured by Heidelberg and most of their converting equipment are Bobst products. "We continue to work closely with our equipment suppliers to keep the most up-to-date technology on our floor and help them develop their equipment to meet the future needs of our customers," Lux said.
The addition of Cadmus' second Gallus KM 510 in-line folding carton production system is just another example of how Cadmus is seeking every opportunity to keep the customers it has, and to continue to develop a new force of happy customers. "We choose the Gallus technology to help us proactively address what we see as a clear change in the way our customers do business. The current trend toward segmented marketing means more SKUs, shorter print runs, and the realization that the classic printers' answer to reducing cost per unit by running large quantities carries an unacceptable inventory and obsolescence cost. The Gallus KM 510 system is specifically designed to provide a new kind of solution for this situation," Lux said.
The Gallus KM 510 is the first folding carton production system produced by Gallus. Its features include two-sided flexographic printing, both flatbed and rotary diecutting, screen printing, foil stamping, film lamination, embossing, and the ability to use UV and/or water-based inks and coatings. Cadmus was initially the beta site for the introduction of this technology to the North American market.
Gaze into the crystal ball
Knowing what the future can bring is virtually impossible, but Cadmus seems poised to take on anything that may come its way, and maybe it's Lux's mental image of Cadmus that keeps the company running smoothly.
And Lux, speaking from experience, offers a suggestion to those thinking of getting into the folding carton converting market. "Globalization is probably the biggest threat to the North American carton industry. As the production of the contents of these cartons continues its migration to lower cost regions such as Asia, printers in these regions will also become more capable of supplying the packaging for these products. Those carton manufacturers that embrace these challenges will be those that thrive in this new world order."
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by Megan Wolf
Assistant Editor
