Kyoshin Paper and Package decided on the Heidelberg Primefire 106 as its next digital press to expand its web-to-pack business on top of the company’s traditional packaging business by signing a contract for the first Primefire 106 in Japan, in April 2019. Heidelberg will install the digital printing system in Kyoshin Paper and Package’s brand new Kanto plant in the summer of this year.
Kyoshin Paper and Package was founded in Kobe, Japan in the summer of 1948. Since then, the company’s ‘challenging spirit’ is the beating heart of the company as a successful packaging service provider. The company currently has 290 employees.
In 2013, the company expanded its packaging business by launching a web-to-pack service called ‘Hacoplay’ focusing on the demand of small size and small quantity cartons with digital presses. It accepts orders as low as even one box with the shortest delivery time of three days. Currently, the maximum sizes were limited by its B2 digital press, but to expand their web-to-pack business the company was looking for a B1 digital press that could meet their customer’s demanding needs.
The first time Kyoshin Paper and Package saw the Heidelberg Primefire 106 press was at drupa 2016, and it was sufficiently impressed to ask Heidelberg to do a print test including challenging images provided by the company. According to Kazuhiro Kajikawa, executive managing director of the Hacoplay division, “The result of the print test was excellent. The print quality such as green and orange were outstanding and we felt that the quality of print by Primefire 106 was the most beautiful we have ever seen. The consistency of quality between the first and 500th sheets was also amazingly stable which surprised even our offset press operator who was with me for the test. Another interesting feature of Primefire 106 for us is to be able to cover 95% of Pantone colors because we as a packaging printer have to use a lot of special colors for package printing. By enlarging the size from A3 to B2, we were able to expand our business and we are expecting more by going for the B1 size with Primefire 106.”
The Primefire 106 is the first available industrial digital printing press for packaging in the B1 format. “Japan is for us a very important market as it is among the top countries for folding carton production and it has probably the highest standards of image quality in the world,” explains Montserrat Peidró-Insa, head of Digital Print Business at Heidelberg. “The success of Primefire customers is what drives our entire team. We are proud to have such a renowned company like Kyoshin Paper and Package selecting Primefire 106 to accelerate their company growth. With this new installation, Primefire is expanding its global presence even further and consolidating itself as a business growth enabler in packaging.”
