Print Innovation Asia Issue 11 2021
34
Presses Deliver Overwhelm Asahi Printing, Japan's leading manufacturer of packaging for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, is transforming production at Kyoto Creative Park, the company's research and development base. Kyoto Creative Park began as a producer of packaging for ethical pharmaceuticals, and in April 2020 expanded its production line to include cosmetics and over-the-counter (OTC) pharmaceuticals and installed two new presses, an eight-color Lithrone GX40 and an eight-color Lithrone GX40RP double-sided press. With its production base in Toyama Prefecture, Asahi Printing had been producing high-quality pharmaceuticals and cosmetics packaging for many years. To strengthen the supply chain, the company established Kyoto Creative Park in 2015. Nomura explains: "The company's manufacturing was concentrated in Toyama, so we established Kyoto Creative Park for business continuity planning and to ensure a stable supply of products to the western Japan area. Since then, we have expanded our production facilities with additional floorspace to produce cosmetics and OTC pharmaceuticals packaging. This enabled us to produce all kinds of packaging at Kyoto Creative Park, further strengthening our manufacturing base." Kyoto Creative Park is the base for leading the company's transformation.
It conducts research and development of technologies and production methods that produce new products offering new added value and functions as a pilot plant to direct these developments to other plants. The new presses were installed with three goals in mind: reproduce the high quality that was cultivated in Toyama, transform the production process based on computer numerical control (CNC), and maximize production efficiency. High quality a must for cosmetics and OTC pharmaceuticals The company has long been meeting the strict quality requirements of its customers. Especially for cosmetics packaging, which requires highly accurate print register, Asahi Printing frequently works with substrates such
as metallized paper. "One of the reasons we chose Komori presses is that the design criteria for cosmetics and OTC pharmaceuticals are high, and with Komori we can build the same high-quality manufacturing system that we have in Toyama," says Nomura. Multi-imposition jobs are common in package printing, making color control across the entire sheet very important. Komori's unique Komorimatic dampening system forms a uniform water film in the lateral and vertical
