CGS in China – Opportunity amidst Crisis

While the rest of the world is gaining momentum postpandemic, China still struggles as the city lockdowns continue to be a fixture.

China’s strict zero-Covid policies has been one of the biggest drivers of the country’s stalled economy and impeded global supply chains. China’s print and packaging industry were similarly scathed.

“From the beginning of March this year, Covid-19 broke out in several cities including Shanghai and Shenzhen. Since then, Shanghai has been in lockdown. This greatly affected public confidence and led to a lack of consumption motivation. Thus, the packaging and printing of consumer goods also suffered a great impact,” said Lilly Xiao, General Manager of the Greater China region for CGS ORIS.

“In times of crisis, there are opportunities too. We’ve found that in difficult times, more printing and packaging enterprises will start to think about implementing solutions that help to optimise the production process. These solutions can ultimately help businesses to control costs, optimise profits and develop in a healthier manner. This is where CGS can come in with our solutions,” Xiao continued.

“Our business was affected from April to June this year, but from July onwards, some of our key projects came to a close. More projects have also been picked up, so our business is definitely recovering – and recovering fast,” said Xiao. Xiao added that CGS’ current reach in China has been on a steady rise since. Its largest growth segments in the country is South China, specifically the Guangdong province.

“South China has always been a relatively advanced region of China's

Lilly Xiao, CGS China

printing and packaging industry, which has a high concentration of many excellent printing and packaging enterprises. These enterprises are serving global brand owners and boasts an international clientele, so their standards are high. More and more of these printing groups are choosing CGS’ colour management and prototyping solutions to execute their ideas and visions,” said Xiao.

“China’s printing industry is currently dealing in the era of small profits. Now print buyers are demanding higher quality, which causes the profits of printing suppliers to become lower and lower. Meanwhile, competition is fierce. The cost of printing materials is rising, along with the cost of human resources,” said Xiao.

“That said, packaging printing enterprises are also understanding the importance of colour management systems. More and more people are realising that it is important to do process control or colour consistency by digital means,” said Xiao.

Colour Consistency for Packaging

As the print and packaging industry continue to grow, so does the need for colour consistency. Due to this, customers in China are seeking colour management solutions for digital press and prototyping solutions for packaging printing.

“Recently, product life cycles are getting shorter and shorter, and packaging and label designs are becoming more variable. Therefore, brand owners demand that the time for proofing and confirmation to be as short as possible,” said Xiao.

“This is why you’ll find more and more packaging printing companies are investing in digital presses. As both colour management technology and inkjet technology has matured, proofing on a digital printer is far more achievable,” said Xiao. “However, if the colour consistency is not accurate, then the job switch between digital printing and traditional printing may take up a lot of additional time and incur a high cost.”

CGS’ colour management solutions ensure accurate and consistent colour. CGS recently installed its X GAMUT solution at JINJIA Group in Shenzhen. Specialising in the design and printing of packaging, the JINJIA Group in Shenzhen had purchased the HP indigo 5600 press years ago to digital proof its packaging, specifically for cigarettes. However, the company found that the colours of the Indigo press was far off from the colours produced on their offset machines. Due to this, the spot colours cannot be reproduced on the Indigo quickly and accurately.

“In June, we installed the CGS X GAMUT solution and offered technical training for the JINJIA Group. With

X Gamut training for Cigarette packet printing enterprises

our X GAMUT, JINJIA is now able to control the colour produced, and maximise the use of the HP Indigo press,” said Xiao.

X GAMUT is a fully automatic colour management software for extended colour printing on digital and conventional presses.

“JINJIA had two 6+2 offset presses working full time just for proofing. In the past, there were more than 3,000 proofing jobs every year, which costs them more than 50 million RMB! Now, they could make accurate proofs on the Indigo in a matter of several minutes. This can predictably save them 1 million RMB every year,” Xiao continued.

Reaching out to Customers in Times of Crisis

In order to reach its customers in times of active lockdowns, CGS has been conducting user workshops to introduce its solutions and success stories. The workshops were held at different cities in China, either at sites of new users or partner locations.

“In the past two years, we did many user workshops to introduce our solutions and success stories in different cities in China,” said Xiao.

“For example, we held the latest workshop in Fujifilm’s branch in Guangzhou on August 12. There, we introduced the advanced digital printing technology, CGS FlexPack packaging proofing system and ECG printing cases, which uses our X GAMUT multi-colour separation solutions. We will continue to organise workshops in different cities, and introduce more of our solutions to the China market,” said Xiao. In addition to workshops, webinars were an effective marketing tool for CGS. This was especially so at the height of the recent pandemic wave that hit the country.

“During the lockdown of Shanghai, together with our dealer, Shenzhen Sunrise, we invited our partners – Fujifilm Business Innovation, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Landa, SCREEN, Hanglobal, amongst others – to hold more than 10 webinars to introduce various digital printing and colour management technologies and applications on digital presses. We were able to record more than 5,000 attendees to our webinars,” said Xiao.

Targeting Brand Owners

CGS is also extending their colour management expertise across the supply chain, specifically the brand owners. Colour management knowledge and know-how are also important to the brand owners.

“Printing and packaging companies are not the only ones with colour issues; brand owners are also facing the same difficulties especially when their brand colours are printed on different materials,” said Xiao.

“This is why this year, we are focusing on colour management service for brand owners as well. Colour management knowledge and knowhow are also important to them. If brand owners do not understand any colour reproduction technology, the printing providers would have to spend more time and cost communicating with them on colours. We hope to help this colour communication process from the whole supply chain,” Xiao concluded.