Henzler Printing Company, Nürtingen, Germany: The creative vein shows particularly in folding cartons

The Henzler printing company has proved it again and again: with a five-colour ROLAND 200 from MAN Roland you can – against the trend to progressively larger formats in packaging production – print folding cartons multiple-up, and highly exclusive ones at that.

When offset printing was still in its infancy, in 1905, two brothers, Karl and Fritz Henzler, decided to set up a business of their own, a letterpress print-shop, in the Swabian town of Neuffen near Nürtingen. Five years later, an exciting new development began to affect the Henzler business: three- and four-colour letterpress with plates of ever finer screens. Also at that time, there were initial experiments with automatic sheet feeding and delivering devices, which were soon to replace the respective time-consuming manual handling of the sheets. With these revolutionizing innovations, which in the course of time also arrived in Neuffen, the Henzler brothers laid the foundation stone for today's printing operation.

Folding cartons from Henzler

Now a business of more than 100 years, the Henzler company in Nürtingen has to a large extent been printing packaging since it was taken over by Klaus Hoffmann in 1972. And the product species of folding cartons are at the centre of Henzler's production range. The company produces an almost infinite variety of this product type. This is taken care of by a creative packaging team able to offer an individual solution for every packaging job, no matter how tricky, with the team's capabilities ranging from development through to complete realization.

Five-colour ROLAND 200

For folding carton printing, Henzler uses a five-colour ROLAND 200 from MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG. The press with double-diameter transferters and impression cylinders stands for the small format (max. sheet format 520 x 740 mm) and as such not really for a sheet format permitting a large number of multiple copies. But Klaus Hoffmann doesn't actually want to get bigger because printers of the 3B format (70 x 100 cm) will, in his opinion, be increasingly pressured by webfed offset. He certainly sees no need and has no intention to expose his business to any added risk in these times of a rather weak economy.

Work in the printing operation is organized in staggered shifts, the runs normally vary between 5 000 and 10 000. Platemaking is still done throughout with computer-to-film, which makes it easier for the press crew when they have to work alone in the late shift, because the press personnel manage better in exposing from film to plate than in transferring the data from prepress to CtP platesetter.

Besides, computer-to-plate doesn't at all pay yet for Henzler because, as junior CEO Art Henning Hoffmann reports, the number of plates needed a day are more than ten but less than 20. A rate of about 20 plates per day is really the minimum for a CtP platesetter to be operated economically.

Making the impossible possible

Nowadays, folding cartons often act as advertising for the brand manufacturer or seller. Accordingly, they must be produced with great care and attention to detail. In this work, the design engineers sometimes like to try out something entirely new, and make the impossible possible by using special enhancing effects, extraordinary folding techniques or ingenious closing mechanisms – regardless of whether the object is standard packaging or a high-quality decorative type, and whether its is required in a large quantity or as a short-run job.

Today there are twelve employees at Henzler who make sure of a smooth production process. Training apprentices has always been a matter of high importance for the Henzler company. Over the past 33 years, 18 young people have been trained, and currently the company is again employing one apprentice.

Packaging ...

The five-colour ROLAND 200 also prints micro-corrugated board qualities of just under one millimetre thickness or 500 to 600 gsm without any problem. Hoffmann has “even speeded Egyptian papyrus through the press”. Prior to the new five-colour press, a four-colour and a two-colour ROLAND 200 did their jobs for Henzler, and they had no problem with heavy stock either, but lacked the setting possibilities now offered by the five-colour press, which make for much easier work.

As far as the consistency of printing quality is concerned, Hoffmann swears by the integrated inking control RCI and the ColorPilot system compactly integrated in the colour-matching console. “When we print 60 000 to 70 000 sheets, the background tint of the last sheet is still as good as that of the first sheet”, he confirms his belief. The next step, according to Art Henning Hoffmann, is to be CIP4 networking, because thus the two data worlds of administration and production will be unified, i.e. commercially required data and technical presetting data.

... and mailings

Henzler prints 30 % board on the five-colour ROLAND 200, but Klaus and Art Henning Hoffmann are aiming at getting more orders for packaging jobs. With mailings, the situation is not much different. This other species is offered together with all that goes with it, including enveloping and posting. In this product field, too, the Nürtingen printers (www.dhenzler.de) intend to gain further ground.