German packaging specialist Schur Star Systems GmbH has further automated its entire prepress workflow with Esko’s CDI Crystal 4835 XPS platemaking solution.

Founded in 1846 by Johan Wilhelm Schur, the sixth-generation family-run company is one of Denmark’s oldest. The group Schur is comprised of 15 international companies in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Australia and the USA that provide a variety of packaging solutions from cartonboard to flexibles. There are around 850 employees. Schur Star Systems GmbH is the flexible division that produces pre-made bags and supplies their customers worldwide.

For more than 10 years Schur Star Systems GmbH has been working with Esko’s technology to produce flexo plates in house. It chose Esko’s CDI Crystal 4835 XPS to further automate prepress. The system combines all the advantages of Crystal technology, including ease of use, reliability, consistency and quality, with the popular 4835 format. The result is high flexo quality for flexible packaging and labels.

With Esko’s Flexo Platemaking Simplified strategy for flexible packaging and labels, prepress has become a highly automated process. From the one-up artwork all the way to the press-ready set of flexo plates, Esko systematically eliminates manual steps and inefficiencies where possible. The platemaking itself is reduced from the typical seven-step process to a two-step process, significantly reducing operator intervention, as well as eliminating the need for operators with platemaking expertise.

Lene Hoegh Madsen, Schur Star Systems GmbH’s prepress manager, comments, “In our end-to-end prepress implementation, we use Automation Engine, Deskpack, and Plato for step and repeat. For platemaking, we now have the new CDI Crystal 4835 and the XPS Crystal 4835. This system is very easy to operate. It is very fast to train new operators so that we can have cross-trained staff available to make plates at night or early in the morning, depending on our needs.”

Esko’s Pascal Thomas, director prepress & platemaking, says, “ We are on a mission to make flexo platemaking simple and straightforward. Schur Star Systems GmbH is yet another reference of a flexo converter who embraces Esko’s flexo platemaking solution for its ease of use and advanced automation.”