X-Rite Incorporated and Pantone have announced that L&E International, a global provider of sustainable packaging products, has selected the ColorCert Suite as its print quality control platform. ColorCert will be used across all L&E locations to monitor, control and report packaging quality to brands and suppliers across China, India, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

L&E also selected PantoneLIVE, a cloud-based digital color standard database, to communicate accurate and achievable colors for package printing as part of its digital color workflow.

L&E complies with strict brand color standards as a certified packaging supplier for adidas, Verizon, Amazon (APASS vendor in Asia), Target, and many other brands and retailers. This investment moves the company toward an end-to-end digital color workflow for communicating, approving, and reporting on color quality to improve efficiencies and visibility. The journey of continuous improvement strengthens L&E’s ongoing efforts to augment sustainability in packaging while improving overall quality.

“We were introduced to the ColorCert Suite and quickly saw its potential as a print quality control platform that could provide us increased visibility into our color performance while also delivering real-time data to help us optimize manufacturing efficiencies and reduce waste,” explains Vikas Gupta, director of creative solutions and development for Asia, L&E International. “We are excited to roll out ColorCert and PantoneLIVE across all our supply locations over the next few months.”

The cloud-based ColorCert Suite is a set of digital tools used to define color requirements and collect press-run color data to report color performance across the supply chain. L&E will measure color values during production, compare them with the expected target, and access reports for actionable advice to improve results. With the ColorCert ScoreCard Server, L&E has one dashboard for instant job scoring and reporting print performance across suppliers and manufacturing facilities to validate and monitor packaging quality and report compliance to brands.

PantoneLIVE syncs directly with ColorCert to enable L&E access to digital Pantone and brand packaging color libraries for accurate color regardless of substrate, printing technology, or ink type. PantoneLIVE will enable the L&E team to reduce packaging makeready times by targeting realistic packaging colors before going on press. These digital packaging color libraries by Pantone reduce rework and press sampling associated with matching physical references on different packaging materials.

“We are excited to be working with one of the leading packaging solution providers in Asia-Pacific as they build a digital print quality program across their packaging supplier network,” says Cindy Cooperman, vice president, brand global strategic accounts, X-Rite. “Integrating color management as part of digital workflows helps package printers improve delivery times while supporting sustainability efforts to reduce waste and rework.”