The Successful Partnership of The Royal Group and Koenig & Bauer Durst

Growing demands and increased expectations from customers is nothing new in the corrugated print industry. New technologies, new requirements, and new opportunities have always driven market standards, and keeping up with these changes is a must for today’s corrugated cardboard manufacturers and converters.

As one of the nation’s largest independent corrugated box and display manufacturers, with almost 100 years of experience, The Royal Group (TRG) has perfected their response to market needs. TRG’s success is driven by its commitment to fulfill its mission: provide value added solutions to the most demanding customers. 

With high-speed automation and sustainable solutions at the forefront of today’s corrugated market requirements, TRG needed to invest in technology that would enable it to serve more clients looking for high levels of customization and versioning, and offer food safe and environmentally friendly packaging. To meet these needs, TRG invested in the Delta SPC 130 Automatic from Koenig & Bauer Durst, with food grade certified water-based ink technology, and Durst (Booth N1043) workflow and analytics software.

The Delta SPC 130 was developed for high-speed short, medium, and long run jobs. “The high-speed automation that comes with the Koenig & Bauer Durst and the amazing print quality that’s there, we’re able to crank out at least 15 to 20,000 sheets on a daily basis. This enables us to be able to increase our capacity, and therefore our ability to be able to meet the demands of the ever-changing marketplace,” says Adam Shafer, director of business development, TRG.

Offering six-colors and single-pass innovation, the SPC 130 reduces lead times and gives customers the flexibility to print unique versions of high-quality graphics for brands and brand extensions, allowing for mass customization at a large scale. “One of the things we really love about the SPC 130 is our ability to give the customer more time to do what they want to do on the front end of a project. The SPC 130 really addresses that speed to market,” says Jude Cohen, VP TRG Retail.

Durst’s water-based ink is environmentally friendly and allows premium quality, odorless, abrasion-resistant, glossy, and lightfast end products to be produced in a single process. “Sustainability is really at the forefront of our industry, so it matched up beautifully to be able to have an aqueous based system that’s fully recyclable and allows you to be able to deliver food grade certified packaging,” says Shafer. With no compromise to quality, Durst’s aqueous based inks are just another advantage of the SPC 130. “When you look at the image quality that you get off of the SPC 130, it really is a game changer. From skin tones to the depth of color, fine details that you get in photographs, in product usage shots, all of them come through almost lifelike,” says Shafer. 

Equipped with Durst’s workflow and analytics software, the Delta SPC 130 can handle all job set up, versioning/variable data and offers excellent color management, streamlining your processes and increasing your production efficiency. “The workflow behind [the SPC 130] allows me to get what I need to get done, the front side is slicker than any interface that I’ve used previously. The ability to get a request, to get our files ripped, to get costing back to our estimators, and then to be able to turn a quote is night and day different from typical flexo technology,” says Kevin Paine, digital sales manager, TRG. 

“We needed high-speed automation, we needed a sustainable solution, and we needed a company that was not only focused on the current platform they have created but how do you continuously improve upon that platform in the future. Koenig & Bauer Durst matched all of those things up,” says Shafer. “If you’re looking for a partner that’s focused not only on innovation, but continuously improving upon the platform, and really wants to be able to collaborate closely to support you in every way, shape and form, Koenig & Bauer Durst is definitely the company you want to be working with.”