G3 Enterprises’ Plate Making Journey
G3 Enterprises is a third-generation, family-owned business serving the wine, beer, spirits and tag industries. Based in Modesto, CA, it specializes in quality integrated packaging products and innovative supply chain solutions. Its team of skilled experts develop totally integrated solutions, grape-to-glass, including comprehensive transportation and warehousing logistics, glass distribution, bottling services, and technological solutions to help customers succeed.
Matt Gauthier, who manages prepress and customer service, says, “Our people are the key to our innovation, quality and technology success, and the reason why we have become an industry leader in logistics to effectively manage a variety of critical components of our customers’ supply chain under one roof.”
“We have long been recognized as specialists with wine labels,” Matt explains. “We utilize an assortment of printer units, including inline embossing, inline hot stamp and inline rotary screen printing to produce about 30,000 plates a year, while serving more than 2,000 wineries of all sizes, from large to boutique brands.”
Elaborating as to exactly how, Matt notes, “In-house prepress and plate making started with a thermal solution. We originally brought in a thermal plate making system to create flexo plates and used it for about five years. Though we could quickly make a plate, the level of quality wasn’t there. So, we set out to find a better solution.”
Quality & Durability
“The first time we tested Flexcel NX, we had some plates sent in from Kodak, put them on press and when we reviewed the results, we were amazed,” Matt relays. “In fact, when I showed our GM, he thought we had run it on the offset press.”
G3 produces work on all kinds of different stock: coated, uncoated, metallized, clear plastic, etc. Matt reports, “The most dramatic improvement we’ve seen has been on uncoated stock. The new plate solution simply gave us a much better means to achieve what we wanted. Given that our run lengths vary anywhere from a few hundred feet to several hundred thousand feet, durability is vitally important. We haven’t had any issues with durability. This has been a game changer for us.”
Rapid Processing
“It is critically important to have the ability to make a single plate quickly, especially when we have customers in-house for a press check,” Matt remarks. “When a customer does come for a visit, making a change is a frequent occurrence. In these instances, we don’t want to spend two to three hours, or more, just to make a new plate. We needed a cleaner, faster way to make plates of the same quality.”
“Increasingly ‘print-process agnostic,’ many label buyers are focused on meeting the need, quickly and at a reasonable cost, rather than concerning themselves the specifics of whether the label is digital, offset or even flexo printed—and rightly so.”
Best of All Worlds
Matt comments, “When Kodak approached us to become an alpha site to test the new NX Ultra solution—an aqueous-processed plate—we accepted. It has been a great experience. Not only does it take less time to make than a solvent plate, but the quality is outstanding. We can now make a new plate, share with the client and finalize the design in about one hour. With water-wash technology, it is easy to clean and doesn’t require any solvents, which makes our plate makers happy.”
To date, issues previously resulting from water-wash plates have not arisen, according to Matt. “Consistency in plate making is critical for customer quality. We want to make sure a plate we’ve made today is going to be exactly the same as a plate we make a year from now. We’ve worked with other water-wash plate systems in the past and found the water got dirty too fast. Those systems were also maintenance intensive, requiring the technicians to spend too much time maintaining the equipment and changing the washout water. The new system provides great value for our business, reduces processing waste and maximizes color consistency benefits inherent to flexographic printing technology.”
Happy Operators
Matt proclaims, “Our operators like utilizing the best and latest technology, provided it works. This has been a relatively easy change for them. They are happy with how the plates perform and how clean they are to handle. Most importantly, the results meet their high standards.”
Matt admits that G3 is “Flying the flag for flexo.” In fact, he recounts that, “There has been a change in mindset within the industry over the last 10 years as flexography developed better technology. We are advocates for flexo and we believe it can meet or exceed output produced by other print technologies. We continue working with designers to ensure they know what flexo can do and the quality results that can be achieved.”
About the Author: Dr. John Anderson is business development director for Kodak’s Flexographic Packaging business. A mechanical engineer and graduate of University of Wales, Swansea, he has a background in packaging printing and the implementation of new techniques for flexographic, gravure, offset, screen and digital printing. Formerly the technical and education director at the English and American Flexographic Technical Associations, he joined Kodak in 2007 where he has held various roles in product marketing, sales, business development and product development. In his current role, he works with leading global print companies and brands as they explore options to optimize packaging supply chains, including the conversion of gravure print production to flexo. He is also a key product architect for the next generations of Kodak’s flexo products.