Printstore Group team visit Ultraviolet technologies – UV Days 2013, Nürtingen, Germany

Undoubtedly, with the advent of the technology of finishing with ultraviolet vanishes and paints the printing world has made a major step forward into the future of the press, in particular, in part of the production of modern packaging materials. After all, the packaging represents today an integral element of virtually any product that demonstrates its benefits and inculcates love in a potential buyer at the first glance. 

Following the recent joining of the print shop Formula 1 (two sheet press machines of B1 format – Heidelberg CD 102 and Heidelberg SpeedMaster) of the PrintStore Group of companies, we accepted with great pleasure the invitation from Heidelberg to get acquainted with some up-to-day technology solutions in packaging and visit Heidelberg’s showrooms displaying modern packaging technologies of UV varnishing.

Apropos, at that very time in Nürtingen, Germany, there was held the annual international exhibition of ultraviolet technologies UV Days 2013, which is considered the flagship for the modern UV printing industry. In that very year, we were especially lucky, as this exhibition was dedicated to the UV technologies in packaging, which is the particular direction that we consider our top priority in terms of the further development of our company.

With the invitations and air tickets in hand, we were looking forward to attending the UV Days exhibition and Heidelberg techno-park, which fostered in our consciousness the prospects of our development in the modern packaging.

The evolution of printing technologies and design, as well as the growing market demand on modern, stylish packaging make the printing industry keep up with the times, offering for the market the advanced solutions involving the UV printing technologies, UV varnishing, a stylish design and costly finishes, which positively tell on sales growth.

UV varnishing is the method of finishing printed products, enhancing their decorative properties. Certain kinds of UV varnish are used to create a unique style of magazines – of both a cover and internal pages, as well as to produce innovative packaging. Such varnish adds luster to the package, thus making it look better. Certain kinds of varnish help transform a simple package into a more expensive, impressive, luxurious one, allowing, as a result, to promote sales.

This clearly explains why the motto of the UV Days annual exhibition of ultraviolet technologies was the slogan “The future of the Press.”

 The advantages of the UV technologies include: the possibility of choosing various formats of the finished product (packaging), smoothly-running printing technology, relatively small costs of large pressruns, no limits for designers’ imagination when making a layout; moreover, one can use either coated paper, cardboard or plastic for printing, thanks to technological opportunities offered by the Heidelberg CD 102 sheet press machine. The offset printing method also enables to easily compose some operator-defined elements on one sheet with the further application of certain kinds of UV varnish subject to the designers’ ideas.

By virtue of all the above, full-color offset printing of packaging products using UV technology is getting increasingly more popular.

 Upon our return from the exhibition, we, being inspired by the new technologies in package production, set a goal to print for our clients the catalogue “A Guide in the printing world”, where we are going to make our readers familiar with the options of finishing the printed paper and cardboard surfaces with UV varnish in the production of modern and stylish packaging products.