The challenge…
Belmont Packaging is no stranger to adapting to stay ahead of the crowd. Established in 1978 as a sheet plant, the company had by the late 1980s found a profitable niche in the high-quality post-print arena, flexo printing a range of shelf-ready packaging products for pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food, beverage, IT and automotive clients, and outsourcing these customers’ litho requirements.
Then it was on to pad production. The company, in the early 1990s developed its Belmont 1100 corrugator. This was for some time the only corrugator in the world capable of producing the type of protective pads typically found in flat-packed furniture and drinking glass packaging, directly off the back of a corrugator.
But holding the enviable position of the only company offering a certain product can of course only last so long. "The cycle of corrugated is that in the 70s and 80s brown boxes were reasonably lucrative, but then case-makers came along and made them very high-volume, commoditised products," explains managing director Sean Moloney. "So we got away from that and went into high-quality post-print. That did us very well for 15 or 20 years and still does to a certain degree."
"But obviously the competition caught up and they started buying the same machine that we’ve got so the margins fell out of that," he continues, adding: "One of the problems with flexo over the past few years has been that, with the economy being how it is, marketing departments have dumbed down their print and that has the effect of there being less value for print. When you’ve got big players coming across taking the lion’s share of the valuable print then you’re left with very basic printing."
Despite these market conditions, the company could have trundled along reasonable nicely, says Moloney. But this is not the Belmont way. "You can make a living all day long, but what we’re looking to do is do that while generating a certain margin," he says.
It was time, then, for the company to look to the next new venture that it could be at least two or three years ahead of the crowd on. This was digital packaging printing.
The method…
In fact to truly stay ahead of the competition, Moloney had to be around 12 or 13 years ahead of the crowd. Tireless research is of course key to ensuring the success of any new venture. And so Moloney in fact started researching digital packaging printing some 10 years ago.
Crucial, was to discover just what the capabilities, or rather limitations, of certain digital technologies were. While digital has made significant inroads into commercial brochure, flyer and even fine art printing, its role in the altogether more complicated world of packaging is still much less well established.
The real challenge was finding kit which could process cardboard packaging substrates at a commercially viable rate. Moloney reports: "I started researching digital around 10 years ago; I started vigorously looking at it about four years ago. To find the kit we obviously had to scour the world to find machines suited to our material. That didn’t exist four or five years ago but it’s now starting to come through."
"Wide-format inkjet has been around a while and been very successful in POS and signage but the machines tend to print on quite rigid materials," explains Moloney. "The trouble with cardboard is it wants to bend, so it’s challenging to say the least. So we had to find our way around that."
He adds: "You’ve got to do a huge amount of due diligence with the market. I think there are something like 97 wide-format printers available at the moment that could potentially run these applications. But ‘potentially’ is the word. You’ve got to know what machine is suitable for what your company does. If you’re a dedicated corrugated manufacturer like we are, then you’ve got to make sure you’re making the right decisions."
The decision Moloney arrived at was to purchase three new inkjet machines, all installed within the last year. So critical is being ahead of the competition to Belmont, that Moloney is wary of revealing the makes of his new machines. But he does reveal that two are wide-format – one printing with UV inks – and that these turn out the printer’s POS and shelf-ready packaging work. The other is narrow-web and produces on-demand transit packaging.
Researching the market demand for digital print has been just as important as investigating available technologies, says Moloney. "There’s no point buying machinery until you’ve established the market so we spent a lot of time understanding what the markets might want next," he says. "We took the risk and took the decision to buy the kit off the back of numerous conversations with our existing customers and as many blue chip customers as we could get our hands on."
The company also had to ensure they had the right personnel to make the new offering work. "It’s not just the machines, it’s not just the print; you’ve got to have studios that understand preflight and all of the ripping, down to the artwork and colour calibrating side. So there’s much more than just printing," says Moloney, reporting that eight new staff have been taken on to work on the digital side of things.
"We’re also developing website platforms and phone apps alongside this. So there’s a whole ream of things that come off the back of the digital printers themselves to make sure that you can interact with as many customers as possible," he adds.
The result…
Although it’s still early days, the digital printing arm of Belmont has made a very promising start. Being able to offer short-run, on-demand, variable data jobs with no plate costs has already brought in 50 new customers who the printer wouldn’t have gained otherwise.
"It’s not so much an obvious boost in turnover yet, but an obvious boost in margin," says Moloney. He reports that currently 50% of the work going through the plant is transit packaging, 40% shelf-ready packaging and 10% POS and digitally printed work.
One success story that springs to Moloney’s mind is a recent job for drinks manufacturer Vimto. Neither flexo nor litho printing would have been suitable for the counter display units Vimto was looking to produce, as the company was keen to change the design of the units seasonally.
"In the old days they would have had to commit to large litho printed quantities or we would have had to do some modifications on the artwork to make it flexo-friendly. Either way they’d have had to commit to either printing plates on the latter or huge quantities of paper on the former," says Moloney. "With digital there was no commitment so if the products didn’t sell, then they wouldn’t have warehouses full of displays they couldn’t use."
"In the end we did about 2,500 of each variant on that first launch," he continues. "They’d have had to commit to probably about the same level on flexo but they’d have had to pay for over £1,000 worth of printing plates. On litho you can probably triple that these days."
Other notable firms interested in Belmont’s digital offering, reports Moloney, are Asda and United Biscuits, which is interested in producing Jaffa Cake packaging digitally. "Lots of small firms are interested too," adds Moloney. "There are lots of firms that can’t afford flexo printing plates or minimum order quantities."
And Moloney is confident getting into this space first will put the company in good stead for some time to come. "Wide-format is definitely doable by other corrugated players in the market, but there’s probably only a handful of them doing that," he says. "And they tend to concentrate on POS. No one’s coming across to our little bit just yet."
BELMONT PACKAGING
Vital statistics
Location Wigan
Inspection host Sean Moloney, managing director
Size The 7,400sqm plant turns over around £6m and has 60 staff
Established 1978 by Mike Moloney, father of current managing director Sean
Products A wide range of packaging including shelf-ready packaging and special lightweight Next Box and F-Lite products, cardboard pads, POS and display signage and paper pallets
Kit Cuir 1700 flexo press, Emba casemaker, J&L nine-point gluer, Belmont 1100 corrugator developed in-house by the company, Asahi flatbed die-cutter, a range of stitchers and other small ancillary kit, and three inkjet digital presses the details of which Belmont is keeping a closely guarded secret
Key dates 1984 Belmont moved to its current premises in Hindley Green, Wigan Late 1980s Belmont established itself in the high-quality post-print arena 2000 The company added signage and display work to its offering 2012 The company started investing in digital printing technology
Inspection focus
Embracing digital printing to insulate the company from increased competition in the high-quality post-printed cardboard packaging market
DO IT YOURSELF
Following suit
Loathe as he is to encourage others into his specific niche, Moloney admits now could be the ideal time for a packaging company to break into digital. Long-run packaging of all types can be a very crowded marketplace these days, so being one of a select few who can offer attractively priced short runs is clearly a good plan. "As soon as you put this in front of them, people ask us questions," reports Moloney, adding: "It’s very early, it’s only just started, there are less than a handful of people doing it so this would be the obvious time to get involved."
Potential pitfalls
For Moloney, there’s no such thing as doing too much research into available technologies and market demand. Otherwise the danger is buying expensive kit you can’t make a decent ROI on. "The market value of these machines – you’re not getting much change out of £750,000," he says, adding: "As ever there are only pitfalls if you don’t understand what you’re getting involved with, so you have to do your research."
Top tips
Ensure your timing is just right While it’s important not to miss the boat, plunging ahead without truly understanding what you’re getting into could be disastrous. "The biggest challenge is when to buy the kit," says Moloney. "That’s obviously a big risk and you have to be very confident in your market research and your back office studio resource infrastructure to make sure it hits the ground running."
Never stand still Setting yourself apart from the competition involves always having your eye on the next big thing. Belmont is already looking at a new digital substrate venture, reports Moloney: "We’re developing digital corrugated so that means we’re developing substrates in order to make digital printing on corrugated more effective. We have our own corrugators so we’re able to work it from paper. We’ll be looking to develop this for ourselves and then selling these sheets to other digital printers."
Moloney’s top tip
"Do your research," reiterates Moloney, simply.
