Hal Hinderliter

Packaging opportunities for commercial printers
December 17, 2007

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Question: I’ve heard that packaging is a lucrative market. What would it take for my sheetfed commercial shop to get into package printing? 

For the answer to this question, I spoke with two different sources – a salesman for a commercial shop that has enjoyed success with packaging, as well as the VP of sales for a major folding carton printer… 

Tom Rizzotto is a sales representative for Precision Litho, a commercial printing company in Vista, California (north of San Diego) that is also a division of Consolidated Graphics (CGX). Featuring two six-color, 40 inch presses with coaters plus a variety of other offset and digital equipment, Precision Litho services a wide variety of print buyers.

Aggressive pursuit of new markets
“Packaging is virtually an untapped market for commercial printers,” Rizzotto observed. “Every type of business is overlapping these days to capture what you can from the marketplace, so of course we’re going to go after more accounts in a more vigorous manner.”

“At this point, we’re primarily a collateral commercial printer,” said Rizzotto. “The objective is for Precision Litho to be a one-stop shop. Our first intent is to sell commercial printing, but we can then come back and say, ‘By the way, we also offer packaging,’” he proclaimed. “When our sales people can offer more than just commercial printing, this builds value, and the more we can establish value within an account, the more work we’re going to do for them.”

“We’ve been successful with certain applications,” Rizzotto revealed. “We’ll do headers for clothing, which requires four-color process printing and then the die-cutting We’ll also do presentation folders, simple diecutting for small boxes and what have you. Our next purchase could be a folder-gluer, that would make just a tremendous amount of sense for us.”

Harder than it looks
For a more conservative viewpoint, I spoke with Tom Roslansky, VP of Sales and Marketing for Royal Paper Box, a manufacturer of folding cartons in Montebello, CA since 1940. Royal’s three 40 inch sheetfed presses are complemented by a pair of newer 29 inch presses to handle short-run production.

“Commercial printers, they’re always out there, on the fringe,” Roslansky noted warily. “They’re trying to get into packaging because they think it’s a very profitable industry – which it’s not. In fact, all facets of the printing industry are having trouble, because it’s a mature industry and the technology has put a lot of people on an equal playing field.”

Tough market, tough competition
Roslansky pointed to Royal’s massive investment in the many forms of ancillary equipment needed to meet their customers needs: a complete CAD system for packaging concept and prototyping, in-house steel rule die making, foil stamping, a variety of die cutting equipment, high-speed converting equipment and more. Rather than worry about commercial shops dabbling in packaging, Roslansky’s greatest concerns are an ocean away. “China is just coming on strong in so many different arenas, that if someone is willing to wait 6, 8, 10 weeks to get their packaging, they can buy it from China probably at one-third of the cost of sourcing it in the US.” 

Even that consideration may vanish in the years to come, fears Roslansky. “We’ve heard that China is increasing the use of large cargo jets to replace the current cargo ships, which will allow them to drastically cut their lead time,” he revealed.

Posted by Hal Hinderliter on December 17, 2007 | Comments (0)