Bricks to build the future
At the beginning of the 1980’s, Siegwerk was an established producer of quality inks in Germany and Western Europe. Elsewhere, Siegwerk supplied ink to the printing facilities of Meredith-Burda Inc. in the USA. In 1980, the plant in Siegburg received assignments from outside Europe for the first time. Thus, first steps towards internationalisation of the company were taken.
Despite these export successes, Western Europe remained the main market. But here, business with inks stagnated in the first half of the decade. There were also problems with rising prices for petrochemical and plant-based pre-products, for organic pigments and carbon black, along with mineral oils and solvents. The packaging ink sector promised the best growth potential and profit opportunities in this situation. Hans Alfred Keller and Dr. Klaus Stammen, the director for technology and materials who became spokesperson of the management board in 1985 therefore decided to expand in the area of packaging inks.
Hans Alfred Keller and Dr. Klaus Stammen
Hans Alfred Keller and Dr. Klaus Stammen – From the beginning of the 1980´s, Hans Alfred Keller and Dr. Klaus Stammen formed a team at the top of Siegwerk. They promoted the internationalisation and modernisation of the company in that deacade.
Hans Alfred Keller continues the family tradition which had always combined its commitment to Siegwerk with a sure sense for the demands of the times and for the right people in management. He and longtime director Dr. Klaus Stammen professionalised the structure of the company in the 1980’s and conquered new markets. Born on February 14, 1922, Hans Alfred Keller assumed responsibility in his father’s company at an early age. Joining the firm immediately after military service in 1945, he became a personally liable shareholder in the same year. After a year spent gaining experience in the USA, he additionally became a personally liable shareholder and managing partner of the paper factory J.W. Zanders in Bergisch Gladbach near Cologne in 1953. While working for Zanders, Hans Alfred Keller did not lose sight of the ink factory in Siegburg. He increased his activities for Siegwerk after the death of his father Alfred Keller in 1968 and moved to the Siegburg site in 1982. In the following period, he assumed various responsibilities in the company’s supervisory bodies, retiring from the firm step by step. Hans Alfred Keller died on October 26, 2004.
The chemist Dr. Klaus Stammen, born in 1930, joined Siegwerk in 1961. From 1966 to 1968, he headed the department for application technology, research and development, before becoming head of production for liquid inks. As a gravure expert, he took over key tasks in the joint venture with Meredith- Burda Corp. in the USA. In 1972, he became President of Siegwerk Inc. in Lynchburg, Viriginia. Re-organisation of the company in 1985 made Stammen director of the Technology and Materials business area as well as spokesperson of the management board. He retired from the company in the fall of 1999, aged 69.
Adding value via quality and competence
In the difficult economic climate of the early 1980’s, Siegwerk focussed on developing inks of ever-increasing quality and on further increasing its technological competence. The research capacities established in the 1970’s proved a signficant competitive advantage in this situation. The laboratories in Siegburg employed highly qualified staff and used modern equipment facilitating research and development at top level.
From the beginning to the middle of the 1980’s, rising postage costs and increasingly expensive raw materials for paper production forced paper manufacturers and printers to supply and use paper with reduced grammage for mail-order catalogues – that were becoming increasingly voluminous. In gravure, lightweight, un-coated and super-calendered paper with grammages of 52 to 45 grams per square meter needed to become viable, as did coated lightweight paper with grammages of down to 36 grams per square meter. Along with customers’ desire to use newspaper-like paper in gravure, this market development posed a significant challenge for the developers of printing ink. Decisive pioneer work was performed by Siegwerk in this field. The results were market-leading gravure ink systems that literally “stood outstandingly” well – meaning that they did not sink into the paper excessively, even if it was open-pored and of light substance.
- Sights set on packaging – With its four-colour flexo-printing machine, Siegwerk was able to test inks under real-life conditions.
In the physics laboratory, Siegwerk further developed its etching-depth measurement method to gauge the engraving depth of electromechanically engraved printing formes. Additionally and for the first time, application of differential geometric principles allowed the development of a procedure to measure the volume of gravure cells. This highly exact measuring method replaced rough estimation on the basis of stereometric calculation methods that had been standard until then. That laid the foundation for practical measurements of ink transfer from gravure cells to variously absorbent paper varieties. On the one hand, this benefited customers, who could now plan the ink requirements for a project more precisely. On the other, Siegwerk was able to develop ink systems with transfer properties optimised for various print carriers.
In general, printing inks needed to meet growingly tough requirements in the 1980’s. In illustration gravure, they had to be adapted for a new generation of rotary machines and for new, extremely light-weight paper varieties. In offset, more and more coloured inks were being used. In packaging printing, a large number of new carriers with very diverse surfaces and absorption capacities demanded new solutions. Flexo printing was enjoying above-average growth. Siegwerk reacted with further diversification of its ink portfolio. In 1990, the databases that had replaced the old recipe books recorded around 80,000 ink recipes.
The boom in the packaging industry
By the beginning of the 1980’s, transparent glass, unimpressi- vely packed frozen food and so called “service packs” made of unprinted paper had all but disappeared from the super- markets. Fully automatic packaging machines put large quantities of stand-up pouches, combination block systems and single-portion packages on the shelves. The assortment of self-service goods in supermarkets grew from around 1,000 articles (1958) to more than 6,000 (1988). Frozen and instant products experienced a boom in the 1980’s, so that by 1990 every fourth package bought contained an instant meal or a frozen pizza. Within 30 years, the amount of packaging produced in West Germany had grown sixfold. At the end of the decade, the packaging industry was registering revenues of 30 billion marks a year – as much as the textile industry.
New challenges in packaging printing
- New materials – The plastic foils of the 1980´s posed new challanges for ink developers in terms of solvents and drying.
In the field of packaging printing, changes in the 1980’s mostly affected carriers. While just five percent of packaging materials were made of plastic in 1965, that share increased to 40 percent by 1985. Siegwerk reacted to this development by concentrating laboratory work on the various new plastic foils. Inks for polyester, polyamide and compound foil had to be re-devised completely. In contrast to paper, absorption of solvents was not possible here, and wetting of the foil was far more complicated due to electrostatic issues. In addition, foil material was commonly deformable under the influence of heat, so that the air used for drying could not be heated arbitrarily. For this reason, Siegwerk developed inks that dried sufficiently at air temperatures of 60 degrees centigrade to be passed over the mechanical roll to the next processing step, or to stacking without blocking or sticking – yet which still left fine con-tones and half-tone dots.
- Broad know-how – Siegwerk took the production of binders into its own hands.
Food packaging posed other problems. Here, the goal was to minimise solvent residue after printing and to ensure low-odour packaging. For instant meals, totally new printing inks, solvents and solvent combinations were necessary. For instance, the inks applied to the aluminium foils covering the food trays used by various airlines needed to withstand deep freezing and sterilisation as well as heating at a later stage. For such extreme demands, Siegwerk developed highly durable two-component inks for aluminium/plastic foils, which were largely resistant to various mechanical, thermal and chemical influences after setting. The company led the global market in this segment by the mid-1980’s.
A totally new, rapidly growing market focussed on cold seal packaging, where no heat is involved and only pressure on the cold seal mass is used to seal packages. Confectionary manufacturers in particular employed this method, since sensitive goods like chocolate and ice cream could be packed gently this way. In the 1980’s, Siegwerk developed special printing inks and respective release varnishes for various cold seal adhesive combinations.
The triumph of colour metrics
Towards the end of the 1980’s, the physics laboratory developed another program based on colour metrics, called SIMESS. It was used in the testing of inks and in production supervision. In 1993, it was shown to visitors for the first time, and from then it was available to interested customers. In packaging printing, the field of colour metrics assumed such an important role at the beginning of the 1990’s that Siegwerk established an autonomous support group in 1994, led by a plastics technician to support customers using the programmes.
Growth sector offset
Along with inks for packaging, sales of offset inks grew in the 1980’s. The multitude of packaged goods needed to be promoted in advertisements, supplements and brochures. In the 1970’s, coloured lottery tickets were the most one would ever find in one’s newspaper, but in the 1980’s the volume of coloured advertising supplements grew steadily. Pin-sharp picture quality on expensive paper as in gravure was not the ticket here. Rather, a cost-efficient technique for mass-distributed printed matter was called for, allowing easy adaptation for offers limited to certain regions or time-frames. Offset did not only allow use of less absorbent and thus cheaper paper, but also facilitated easy alterations of price quotations and other data via exchange of the black plates. In this field, Siegwerk mainly produced heat set inks for commercial printing.
For a long time, offset printers had only been able to choose between cheap uncoated and expensive coated paper, but in the 1980’s a new type of paper for rotary printing was introduced under the brand name WSOP (Web Sized Offset Paper). This so-called supercalender (sc) paper was highly absorbent and accepted water and the ink from the rollers much better than conventional paper. To balance the proportion of water to ink for these new paper types in accustomed quality, Siegwerk developed special inks for calendered paper. The company entered the market early with its SC program and was soon able to implement successful projects in cooperation with printing company Schwendt.
Environmental protection as an innovation impulse
The public debate on environmental protection and eco-balances provided impulses for the further development of printing inks in the 1980’s. A central topic was the sustainable use of oil and derived pre-products for the printing ink industry. Among other things, Siegwerk looked at renewable raw materials to replace mineral oil used as thinners. The company also developed offset inks based on vegetable oils.
In the flexo printing field, Siegwerk developed water-soluble inks for the most common substrates in reaction to the intense discussions on emissions of volatile organic solvents. However, printers only rarely used such inks because they limited production too much: Printers had to reduce the speed of their machines significantly, especially for non-absorptive substrates. Additionally, the inks were less resistant and glossy than conventional products. The water-based inks could only be used without limitations in wallpaper and corrugated cardboard printing. Experiments and test print runs, which Siegwerk conducted in cooperation with printers to probe the use of water-based inks on coated paper, aluminium and plastic foils, led to a clear conclusion: specially developed ink series based on solvents were better placed to guarantee minimal odour.
The recipe system Siegwerk (RESI)
- Computers enter the scene – With the Siegwerk Recipe System (RESI), printers could compute recipes swiftly and precisely.
Along with new inks for printing technologies under development, Siegwerk worked on technical solutions for the printing industry in the 1980’s. Inspired by electronically controlled measuring and mixing instruments in the painting business and a respective recipe system for car paints, staff in the physics laboratory developed the digital recipe system RESI 88 at the end of the decade, which supported printers’ need for precision and speed in matching colour shades. RESI 88 was based on colour metrics, which reflect human sight processes in mathematical terms. That way, misunderstandings arising from simple description of colours could be eliminated.
- Feedback – RESI also facilitated control of print proofs and run-ons.
RESI 88 was a combination of a spectral photometer, a computer and software. That way, firms were no longer dependent on specialised colourists or IT experts to measure media, colour separations, proofs, print proofs and run-ons. RESI was able to compute recipe suggestions from colour selections of up to 20 individual colours, simplifying recipe corrections and use of leftovers. With its recipe and colour library, RESI also supported warehousing, because only a limited number of basic colours needed to be stocked. The system catered for repeat assignments and recorded leftover quantities, the utilisation of which saved printers time and money. The recipe system was suited to all printing methods, but new dimensions in packaging gravure and flexo printing were particular boons, for example by matching print job samples. When Siegwerk first presented RESI 88 at the 1990 drupa, the system met with immediately interest. With RESI 88 and other developments in colour metrics specially adapted for the printing industry, Siegwerk again demonstrated its technological competence and marked customer focus at the threshold of the 1990’s.
