Pioneer T-1100s

[Ezilda Newnam]

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From North America to Europe and beyond, there is a growing 'local food' movement in which consumers prefer to eat foods that are farmed in their local region. These 'locavores' like to know where their food comes from and they want to support their local economy and community. Some savvy food brands are adapting their marketing strategies to serve this 'buy local' consumer demand. One such brand is Golden Egg in the Czech Republic.

Golden Egg is a leading brand of fresh, high-quality eggs, sourcing from egg farms in four different regions of the country. Through its parent company, Zlata Vejce, the Golden Egg brand sells about 300-350 million eggs annually, mostly in Czech Republic, but also in Slovakia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Italy.

Like most competitive brands, Golden Egg had previously utilized the same package design for all its eggs, no matter where they were farmed. To appeal to its quality-conscious locavore consumers, Golden Egg adopted the unique marketing strategy to display the origin of its eggs directly onto the package. Each corrugated package has a versioned graphic design with copy clearly designating the local Czech region where the eggs were farmed so consumers can shop with knowledge and confidence.

The challenge with creating and printing new packaging designs on analog printing presses is the high cost of plates and the extra time required to create them. So in order to print its regionalized packages in shorter runs, and with cost efficiency and fast turnaround, the capabilities of digital print were required. Golden Egg turned to the THIMM Group, a leading corrugated converter and a pioneer in digital pre-print through its Christiansen Print division.

With the high-volume digital printing capability of THIMM's HP PageWide Web Press T1100S, Golden Egg can now mark its products to specify the region of origin through the egg's shelf-ready packaging and point-of-sale display.

Unlike many other digital printing alternatives for corrugated packaging, HP PageWide Presses use true water-based ink with no UV-reactive chemistries. Thus, HP provides a robust and trusted solution for food-safe printing of primary and secondary corrugated packaging.

Yet another benefit to Golden Egg from THIMM's HP PageWide Press is print quality superior to that of flexo print. Juraj Schummer, Zlat Vejce's Chairman of the Board, says, "For digital printing, we decided to increase our flexibility with THIMM in the production and delivery of cartons with more graphic modifications and also because of the initial cost of printing plates that we do not have to pay for. Although it is a more expensive way to print cartons, the quality of the designs, without the previous wavelet effect caused by flexographic printing, is obvious at first glance. We believe that high-quality carton printing will underscore the quality of our eggs."

Clearly, the quality of the printed package is closely related to the quality of the product inside. Plus, additional localized versioned content can assist the consumer in making an informed decision. These new possibilities are now enabled through digital print.

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